Whisper of Venom

SIX

5-9 KYTHORN THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS O NE (1479 DR)

Tchazzar, Jhesrhi, Aoth, Cera, and Shala approached Soolabax with caution. Which turned out to be unnecessary, because the orange light of the setting sun revealed that the besieging army was gone. Nothing remained but burned and toppled trebuchets, unburied bodies, and trampled earth.

Scar screeched like he was angry he’d missed the fight. Jhesrhi peered down into the city. She wanted to know how many casualties the Brotherhood had sustained, but found it impossible even to guess from so high up and far away.

Tchazzar blasted flame across the sky. “A victory!” he thundered. “The first of my new reign!”

The flash and bellow made the folk down in the streets look up at the sky. When they saw the red dragon, they started to cheer.

Soolabax wasn’t Luthcheq. There was scarcely room for Tchazzar to land inside the walls. But that didn’t deter him. He somehow managed to set down in the intersection of three streets in front of Hasos’s keep. A flick of one wing scraped shutters and paint from the facade of a house. His tail swished and smashed a wooden horse trough, splashing the contents onto the ground.

Then he shrank, becoming the handsome warrior in red and gold. His companions landed beside him. For all her manifest toughness, Shala looked glad to be back on solid ground.

The enormous hawk the former war hero had ridden gave Jhesrhi a fierce, inquiring stare. She nodded, and it dissolved into a gust of air that stirred everyone’s hair and cloaks, becoming pure wind once again.

Looking more serious than was her wont, plump, pretty Cera said, “There must be wounded. If Your Majesty will excuse me, I’ll go help tend them.”

Tchazzar smiled and waved a hand in dismissal.

Cera and Aoth exchanged a quick, fond look. Then the sunlady hurried away while Gaedynn, Hasos, and others came striding out of the keep.

Seeing the archer made Jhesrhi feel relieved but guilty too. The relief made at least a little sense. Gaedynn could have conceivably have died in the fight to break the siege, as any warrior could perish in any battle. But the guilt was nonsensical, yet another instance of the exasperating way just being around him could tie her emotions into knots.

The newcomers bowed, and Tchazzar quickly gave them permission to rise. “Well done, gentlemen!” he boomed.

“Thank you, Majesty,” Hasos said. “The knights of Soolabax fought superbly.”

“We Brothers and the fellows Aoth mustered from along the border were there too,” Gaedynn drawled. “We held the knights’ horses and such.”

“And are there prisoners?” Tchazzar asked.

Gaedynn nodded. “Some.”

“That too was well done,” the dragon said. “Sacrifice them. It will give me the strength I need to crush Alasklerbanbastos.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Shala asked, “All of them?”

Tchazzar grinned. “Why not? Every drop of spilled blood will make me more powerful. And it’s easier than guarding and feeding the bastards, isn’t it?”

“Probably so,” said Aoth. “But there surely hasn’t been time to question them all. We might be able to extract some useful information. We can certainly ransom the ones whose families have coin. And the sellswords might switch sides with a little coaxing.”

“Besides,” Shala said, “I’ve studied Chessenta’s history-your history-and I don’t understand. You never required such … such a thing in the past.”

“No,” Tchazzar said, gritting his teeth, “I didn’t, and then when the Blue Fire took … Never mind. You’ve heard your orders. Does anyone have a mind to disobey?”

Another silence. Then Jhesrhi said, “Of course not, Your Majesty. Everyone here wants to serve you. It’s just that there’s a problem with carrying out your will.”

Tchazzar frowned. “What’s that?”

“Lady Halonya and the rest of your priesthood are back in Luthcheq, seeing to the construction of your temple. There’s no one here to perform the sacrifices.”

“Then Cera Eurthos and her clerics can do it.”

“With all respect, Majesty, I doubt that. The Keeper’s priests don’t even sacrifice animals. I suspect they’d botch it, and then all that power would go to waste. Whereas if you keep the captives for a tenday or a month …”

The war hero fingered the ruby in the pommel of his sword. “You may have a point. But curse it, I’ll have something to slake my thirst. Every twentieth man. Or orc, or kobold, or whatever.”

“I’ll see to it,” Hasos said.

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.”

“I hope he’s all right,” Jhesrhi said. “I hope he made it home.”

“The Brotherhood is his home,” said Gaedynn, “and I hope he comes back in time to help us fight the cursed dragons. By the way, I like your new outfit. It’s very Red Wizard.”

That brought a twist of genuine anger to her expression. “It’s not like … It’s a completely practical robe and cloak for a mage to wear to war.”

“Is it? Then I suppose I’m just not used to seeing you put on new clothes until the old ones are covered in patches and falling apart even so.”

“And I’m not used to hearing you speak to me with genuine spite in your taunts. Since you plainly don’t want my company, I’ll bid you good night.” She turned away.

Fine, he thought, go, but then something made him speak up after all. “Wait. Stay if you like. I’m not angry at you.”

She turned back around and, the golden ferrule of her staff clicking on the timbers, walked to the parapet. “At what, then?”

He waved a hand at the pyre. It was quickly burning down to orange coals, and the folk who’d stood watching it were drifting away. “That, I suppose.”

Jhesrhi sighed. “Well, they were just kobolds.”

“I know. Give Hasos credit for choosing those nasty little brutes if he had to butcher someone. Still, you know me, Buttercup. I’m not chivalrous. I’ll cheerfully slit the throat of every bound, helpless prisoner and his mother too if I see a need for it. But this …” He shook his head.

“Well,” she said, “each of them had committed treason by taking up arms against his rightful sovereign. It’s common for people to pay for that offense with their lives.”

“That assumes Chessenta’s claim to Threskel is legitimate. Neither you nor I know that it is.”

“Or that it isn’t.”

“My point is that if we don’t know, the Great Bone Wyrm’s people certainly don’t. When they marched to war, they were just obeying the only rulers they’ve ever known.”

“Maybe when they hear what happened here, they’ll reconsider whether they really want to do that.”

Gaedynn frowned. “I concede that sending a message might be a sensible reason to slaughter some prisoners. But that’s not why Tchazzar did it.”

Jhesrhi hesitated. “Sometimes a king doesn’t explain his true reason for doing a thing. Not if he thinks he can gain some advantage by giving a false one.”

“Why in the name of the Black Bow are you defending him? You thought he was being crazy and cruel just like the rest of us did. That’s why you tried to talk him out of it. And why, just now, you made the fire flare up to burn the bodies quickly. You’re ashamed of what he did.”

“All right. There may be moments when his mind isn’t altogether clear. If something had tortured and fed on you for a hundred years, you might have the same problem. He’ll mend with time.”

“Have you seen any signs of it so far?”

She scowled. “You shouldn’t talk about him this way.”

“Why not? Are you going to tattle?”

“Of course not! But when we first arrived, you were impudent to his face. That’s … unprofessional, and bad for the company as a whole.”

He realized she was right, but he didn’t want to admit it. “I thought working for the zulkirs was bad, but at least they were sane.”

“You’re only seeing one side of him. He ended the persecution of those with arcane gifts.”

Which you hope will ensure that no more little girls suffer the way you did, Gaedynn thought. But what he said aloud was, “And, more importantly, gave you the chance to flounce around in silk and jewels and play the princess.”

“Enough of this,” Jhesrhi rapped. “Enough of you.” She turned back toward the stairs that led down into the keep, and that time, he didn’t try to stop her.

The battlefield lay in the borderland between the desolation of Black Ash Plain and the fertile fields of Tymanther. There were no columns of solidified ash sliding around-which was good, since the giant shamans used them as weapons. But the vegetation was sparse and twisted, and when the breeze gusted from the south, the air smelled faintly of burning.

After the dragonborn had destroyed several giant raiding parties, the rest joined together to make a stand. They waited like gaunt, crudely sculpted figures of stone. Medrash studied their ranks, looking for the leader strong enough to unite the once-contentious barbarian tribes. He couldn’t identify him. So far, no one had.

The giants stood with little apparent organization. Facing them across the length of the field, the Tymantherans had more, although Khouryn had grumbled that they still looked like a motley assortment of little armies instead of one big one. Lance Defenders and anyone else who’d received the dwarf’s training stood in what amounted to one coherent formation, and the warriors who marched under the banners of the Platinum Cadre in another. Small war bands organized by various clans had rather haphazardly taken up positions between and around the two larger ones.

Balasar naturally stood among the dragon-worshipers. Medrash fought the impulse to make eye contact or even glance in his clan brother’s direction. Balasar had told Nala and Patrin that his newfound devotion to Bahamut had estranged him from his kin, and Medrash didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that impression. He contented himself with silently asking Torm to strengthen his comrade’s arm in the fight to come.

Horns sounded overhead. Tarhun was in the air riding a bat, and so were the buglers the vanquisher used to relay his orders to his troops.

Dragonborn archers drew and loosed. Bat riders swooped toward the enemy, and they too shot arrows. Medrash knew that every bowman who’d spotted an adept was trying to eliminate that particular target.

Meanwhile, the clan wizards chanted in unison. Wind howled in the faces of the giants. The idea was to scour away every stray fleck of ash on the plain before the shamans could use it to conjure one of their reptilian servants.

The giants heaved enormous javelins and rocks, the raw strength of their towering frames a match for the mechanical power of a bow. Dragonborn reeled and fell. A horse screamed, collapsed, and-rolling and writhing-ground its rider beneath it. A bat plummeted.

Meanwhile, impervious to the arrows streaking at them-or so it seemed-the adepts brandished their colored globes. The polished curves gleamed in the sunlight, and hulking, scaly creatures sprang into view.

They didn’t scramble from drifts of ash, because the dragonborn mages had blown those all away. They leaped out of nowhere. Medrash realized they always had. The giants, to confuse their enemies, had simply made it look like ash was necessary.

A couple of the beasts looked like stunted, misshapen red dragons. Flames leaping not just from their jaws but rippling across their entire bodies, they jumped into the air, lashed their leathery wings, and soared toward the bat riders.

Other shamans summoned the winged green creatures and gray lizard-bears Medrash had encountered previously. The former hopped and glided, and the latter ran-but snarling and screeching, each charged the dragonborn ranks in its own particular fashion.

Behind them, hunched, dwarf-sized creatures skulked from nothingness. Their hide hung in loose brown folds, and their long arms dragged on the ground. Evidently intending to harass the Tymantherans from the flanks, they headed for the edges of the field.

“Lances!” Medrash bellowed. A split second later, the brassy notes of a bugle cut through the air. The vanquisher was ordering him to take the same action he’d just begun on his own initiative.

He felt taut with eagerness, because he’d learned from experience that Khouryn’s methods worked. And they now had a chance to demonstrate that to a great many dragonborn, the vanquisher included. Everyone would see that Tymantherans didn’t have to betray their ancestors and grovel before those heroes’ ancient enemies to defeat the giants. No matter how many new tricks the savages mastered.

More smoothly and uniformly than they had mere days before, all the lancers canted their lances at the proper angle. On Medrash’s command, they walked their horses forward. Then trotted. Then cantered. Their weapons dropped to threaten the onrushing saurians, and then they broke into a gallop.

But Medrash’s brown gelding only ran for a couple of strides. Then the animal balked, nearly pitching its startled rider out of the saddle. The horse tossed its head and whinnied.

Shields overlapping, all but marching in stride, the spearmen advanced in good order. Khouryn gave a slight nod of satisfaction, then saw disaster strike Medrash’s charging lancers.

Almost every horse spooked at the same instant. Despite the long weapons in the lancers’ hands, and the way they were riding nearly shoulder to shoulder, some of the steeds managed to halt, turn, and bolt toward the rest of the vanquisher’s army. Their masters were the lucky ones. Other animals slammed into their fellow steeds and knocked them stumbling, or off their feet entirely. Dragonborn yelled, hauled on the reins, and dug in their spurs, fighting to regain control. Meanwhile the first wave of conjured creatures swept over them. A glider ripped a warrior from the saddle. A lizard-bear seized a horse in its fangs and wrenched it down onto the ground, breaking both its front legs in the process. The steed screamed and thrashed. Vapor billowed from around the reptile’s jaws as its corrosive spittle ate its way into the animal’s flesh.

“Rock of Battle!” Khouryn cursed. “Charge! Charge!”

“That will break the formation,” said a sergeant who’d apparently learned the lessons of drill a little too well.

“To the Abyss with the formation!” Khouryn roared. “Run up there and kill something!” Before the enemy killed every one of the riders.

Medrash’s horse bucked and reared. He decided he had to get off before the animal threw him. He dropped his lance and kicked his feet out of the stirrups, which made his bouncing perch even more precarious than before. Clinging to his saddle with his one free hand-his shield prevented the use of the other-he swung his leg over the gelding’s back and jumped.

He landed with a jolt, staggered a step, then caught his balance. All around him, gray and green reptile things lunged and pounced, rending dragonborn who were virtually unable to defend themselves. Posing nearly as much of a danger as the saurians, horses with bloody wounds and fuming burns surged one way and another.

At least, since he was no longer fighting his own terrified mount, Medrash could more easily focus his will. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then reached out to Torm.

The god’s Power rushed into him like a flash flood surging down a gorge. He shook his steel-gauntleted fist above his head.

The sun was shining. A lesser light should have gone unnoticed. But somehow brightness, or a sense of it, pulsed from his hand. With it came a suggestion of quiet that was just as paradoxical amid the roars, shrieks, and crashes of blows on armor. For some distance around him, saurians hesitated in midattack. Horses stopped resisting the dictates of spur and rein.

Unfortunately, the artificial tranquility would only last for a few heartbeats. “Dismount!” Medrash bellowed. “Fight on foot, but like Khouryn taught you!”

Riders swung themselves down from their mounts. Shaking off passivity, one of the gray saurians charged a dragonborn who had one foot still in the stirrup and one on the ground.

Medrash couldn’t intercept the threat in time, but his breath could. As he snatched for the hilt of his sword, he spat lightning. The crackling flare seared the lizard thing’s body, bursting some of the tumorlike growths bulging from its flank. It stumbled and jerked for the moment the punishment lasted, then whirled toward the one who’d hurt it.

Medrash let it come to him, then sidestepped just as it rushed into striking distance. Its snapping jaws still bashed his shield and jolted his arm, but at least its momentum didn’t knock him off his feet. He cut into the creature’s hide and shouted “Torm!” The god’s Power manifested as a thunderclap. Though Medrash perceived just how supremely loud it was, he heard it without distress. But, unprotected by the Loyal Fury’s grace, the lizard thing lurched and roared like it had suffered a second and even more damaging sword stroke.

But that didn’t finish it either. It spun in Medrash’s direction, tearing his blade from its body and splashing him with a droplet or two of blistering fluid. It struck at him, and he interposed his shield. The attack slammed into the obstruction, and then the saurian twisted its neck and caught the edge of the shield in its fangs. It gnawed as it lashed its head back and forth. Bits of smoking, dissolving oak and hide fell away from the shield. Medrash’s arm throbbed like it was coming out of its socket. He staggered in a frantic effort to keep his foe from yanking him off his feet.

He cut at the lizard-bear, only to find that off balance as he was, he could do no more than scratch its hide. He tried to pull his arm free of the straps securing it to the crumbling shield but, perhaps because of the attitude into which his adversary had twisted it, he couldn’t.

He pushed aside incipient panic and drew down Torm’s glory once again. He willed the saurian to recognize the Power burning inside him, and to fear it.

Which, from a mundane perspective, was absurd. At that moment, the lizard thing was like some enormous hound at furious play, while he resembled its helpless bone. Yet the brute faltered, its eyes widening.

Medrash recovered his balance, stepped, and thrust with all his strength. His sword punched deep into the creature’s skull, and its legs buckled beneath it. But even in death it clung to the shield, and so dragged him down to the ground along with it. Finally, on one knee, he managed to slip his aching arm from the loops.

A shadow fell over him.

Instinct made him raise his shield arm as he turned. The slashing wing claws that might otherwise have shattered his skull or broken his neck clattered against his armored limb instead. Still, the multiple impacts stabbed pain through the already-tortured arm and flung him backward, away from the dead lizard-bear and the sword still embedded in its head.

The glider landed on its short, thick legs, then pivoted. Medrash scrambled toward his weapon. The saurian’s head snapped forward. Its jaws opened wide and spewed greenish vapor over him.

Medrash’s skin burned, and his eyes filled with blinding tears. He started coughing and couldn’t stop. He needed to use Torm’s Power to cleanse him of poison, inside and out, but he knew his foe wasn’t going to give him the chance.

Then a spear jabbed through one of the creature’s batlike wings. It snarled, turned, and found itself facing three more such weapons, two aimed high, the other low. It whirled a wing back to slash with the bony fingertips protruding from the scalloped edge, and its foes backpedaled. More spears jabbed it from behind, as warriors assaulted it with the same tactics they’d employed against the hovering wooden Beast.

Despite the handicap posed by his burning nose, mouth, throat, and lungs, Medrash wheezed a prayer. All his pains eased, including the fierce one in his shield arm. He flexed it and found that even if had been broken a moment before, it wasn’t anymore.

Tears still streaming from his eyes, he scrambled onward to the lizard thing’s carcass and jerked his sword out of it. Then he drew himself to his feet and looked around.

On every side, dragonborn fought saurians and the ash giants who’d advanced behind the conjured horrors. Some of the warriors were the surviving members of Medrash’s dismounted cavalry, often using lances as spears for the sake of the reach they provided. Others were actual spearmen, who must have rushed forward to support their embattled comrades. Medrash recognized the hammer and axe emblem of the company Khouryn was commanding personally, although amid all the howling, crashing frenzy, he failed to spot the dwarf himself.

He could see that in such chaotic circumstances, when a new enemy could come at a fighter at any instant and from any side, Khouryn’s tactics were less effective than they might have been otherwise. Still, they were working to a degree, and as a result the fight wasn’t over yet.

Medrash looked around for a fallen lance, spear, or an intact shield. He failed to find any of them in his immediate vicinity, but spotted a battered heater lying between a giant’s bare, filthy feet. He shouted a battle cry and charged.

Balasar winced when the horses balked, turning what should have been a devastating attack into little more than a sacrificial offering to the ash giants and their reptilian pets.

To their credit, Patrin and some of the other cultists looked just as horrified as he felt. Nala, however, simply kept swaying back and forth and crooning a sibilant prayer or incantation.

Over the course of the next little while, Medrash managed to jump off his panicked steed and use his paladin gifts. Balasar couldn’t tell precisely what his clan brother had done, but it seemed to affect everyone and every beast in his vicinity, and to create a pocket of savage resistance in what was otherwise a massacre.

Then Khouryn’s spearmen charged up to engage the enemy. Other dragonborn might follow eventually, but-perhaps astonished by the bloody fiasco the lancers’ charge had become-they were slow to act. Nor were the flying trumpeters sounding the signal. Maybe Tarhun was currently incapable of giving the order.

In any case, it seemed clear that without more support that even Khouryn could provide, the Tymantherans fighting in the center of the field couldn’t hold. Balasar turned to Patrin. “We have to help them.”

“I agree,” Patrin said. But instead of ordering everyone forward, he wound his way through his swaying, twitching, shuddering troops toward Nala. Balasar followed.

When he came close enough, he felt the sting of the magic seething in the air around her. It muddled his senses-for an instant, he experienced the purple of her robe as a sweet stink like that of rotting flowers and the unevenness of the ground beneath his feet as a shrill glissando.

With one hand, Nala gripped her staff. The other was clenched too, and Balasar’s intuition told him it was holding something, even though no trace of the object protruded beyond her fingers.

He suddenly suspected he knew exactly what sort of spell she was working. And if he’d been confident of his ability to prove it afterward, he would have run her through that instant.

“Sir Balasar recommends that we attack immediately,” Patrin said. He’d stopped walking, but his beard of chains was still swinging and clinking a little. “I do too.”

Nala looked annoyed at having to suspend her chant, then smoothed her features into a fonder though solemn expression. “Not yet,” she said. “The god will tell me when the moment is right.”

“Our comrades need us now,” Balasar said.

“I promise you,” the priestess said, “I’ll give the word as soon as I can.”

Right, thought Balasar. Just as soon as Medrash and Khouryn’s warriors are dead, and the new tactics discredited. As soon as you can once again make the claim that only dragon-worshipers can defeat the giants.

“As soon as you can,” said Patrin. He turned away.

As they strode back to their positions in the vanguard, Balasar said, “No one respects Nala more than I do. As our priestess. But you’re the soldier. The war leader. If you think-”

“No,” Patrin said. “It’s as hard for me as it is for you, but no. Why did we march here under this banner”-he nodded to indicate the purple pennon with the platinum dragon coiling down its length-“if not to assert our faith?”

Actually, Balasar thought, I’m here to destroy your ridiculous creed. But not at the cost of Medrash’s life. He would have forsaken the cultists and run forward to help his kinsman that instant, except that it would have been an empty gesture. A single warrior couldn’t turn the tide, no matter how skillful he might be. He needed all the split-tailed sons of toads swaying and jerking around him.

Swaying and jerking … with the fury of the dragon god boiling up inside them, they were as frantic to attack as he was.

Balasar started writhing like the others. “Bahamut!” he howled. “Bahamut!” His companions echoed the cry. He clashed his sword against his targe, and the others did that too.

He gripped his weapon midway up the blade, then used the foible to slice the right side of his face, where the bone piercings of Clan Daardendrien wouldn’t snag it. He swept the sword through the air, spattering his neighbors with drops of blood. “Bahamut!” he roared.

The wyrm-worshipers cut themselves too. It spread through their disorderly ranks like a ripple in a pond. Balasar then punched the olive-scaled fellow on his left.

The cultist rounded on him with rage in his eyes and tongues of yellow fire flickering between his fangs. Balasar screamed, “Bahamut!” And instead of spitting flame at him, the dragon-lover punched him back, then turned to give someone else a shove.

When they were all thumping one another, Balasar judged that they were about as crazy as he knew how to make them. He brandished his bloody sword at the melee up ahead, bellowed, “Kill!” and charged.

For a heartbeat or two, he had the horrible feeling that despite all he’d done to stir them up, no one was going to follow. Then the cultists too screamed, “Kill!”-or else the name of their god-and pounded after him.

He would have been happy to let them catch up. Unfortunately, a person couldn’t pretend to be mad with bloodlust and behave cautiously at the same time. So he kept running as fast as he could, and met the enemy before any of his companions.

But not the enemy he wanted to engage, not the ash giants and green and gray reptiles locked in battle with Medrash and Khouryn’s troops up ahead. Earlier he’d noticed the brown, hunched, long-armed creatures with dangling folds of skin maneuvering to the edges of the battlefield. Now they came scurrying forward to attack the charging cultists’ flank.

They didn’t look like much of a threat compared to either the ash giants themselves or the other minions the barbarian adepts had summoned. Balasar hoped the ones that managed to intercept him would only delay him a moment or two. Then a pair of them lashed their arms at him like they were throwing rocks.

Wind screamed. Either scooped from the ground or simply conjured out of nothing, sand battered Balasar. It stung his eyes, forced its way into his nostrils and mouth, and choked him.

Blinking and spitting, he covered up with his shield, then peeked over its rim as soon as the blast subsided. Through a stinging blur of tears, he saw the brown creatures rushing him, one a scuttling stride or two in advance of the other.

Turning back and forth, he pretended he couldn’t see them at all. Then he lunged and cut at the head of the one in the lead the instant it came close enough.

The brown creature’s body dissolved in a puff of sand, and the sword swept through the grit. The sand leaped several paces away, where, swirling, it congealed into solid flesh and bone once more.

The trick startled Balasar, but not enough to make him lose track of the second sand thing, which had scrambled around him to strike from behind while its comrade had him distracted. He whirled and shifted his shield, and claws rasped across its surface. He riposted with a chest cut, and the creature collapsed. It was reassuring to see that the things couldn’t evade every attack by dissolving into dust.

He whirled back toward its partner. It cocked back its apelike arm to hurl more sand. Balasar spat frost at it.

Its staggered and pawed at the rime suddenly encrusting its blunt-snouted, lizardlike face. Balasar rushed it. It wiped the ice off its eyes just in time to see the slash that sheared through its throat.

Balasar looked around. The sand things had proved tougher than anticipated, but, frenzied, spewing their breath weapons repeatedly, the members of the Platinum Cadre were making short work of them. He judged that in a few moments, everyone should be ready to race on to the real fight up ahead.

Then a huge black bat slammed down on the ground-not plummeting, but almost. A split second later, the life went out of its eyes. Mangled and burned, it had plainly given the last of its strength to save its rider from a fatal fall.

For a moment Balasar thought it a valiant effort wasted, because the big dragonborn slumped into the saddle looked as dead as his steed. But then the fellow groggily lifted his head, revealing the square gold studs pierced into the green hide under his eyes. The rider was the vanquisher himself.

His trappings and armor charred, as was, no doubt, some of the flesh beneath, he fumbled with the straps holding him in the saddle. Then something else, something bigger even than a Lance Defender’s mount, thudded down on the ground.

Like Tarhun’s bat, the crimson reptile had shredded wings, with arrows embedded in various places where its halo of fire had yet to burn them away. It might have trouble returning to the air. But judging from the way it immediately headed for the vanquisher, each step igniting grass and weeds, it still had plenty of fight left in it.

Alas, Tarhun didn’t. He managed to unbuckle the last of his straps, dismount, and lift his greatsword as high as his chest. Then he collapsed.

Patrin had three brown opponents alternately trying to flense the flesh from his bones with their talons or scour it off with blasts of sand. Still, as he pivoted to and fro, he glimpsed the maimed bat’s plunge to earth and all that followed. He saw Balasar sprint to interpose himself between the huge red beast and the sprawled, motionless Tarhun.

No lone swordsman, no matter how skilled, was a match for such a behemoth. Patrin decided he had to help, and quickly. He’d held off using Bahamut’s gifts, saving them for foes more formidable than his current adversaries, but now he reached out to the Platinum Dragon for aid.

Power thrilled along his nerves. It simultaneously seemed to descend from above and to well up inside him, a sensation impossible to describe to anyone who hadn’t experienced it for himself.

Patrin whirled his sword in a circle, and brightness-or the pure, rarefied idea of it-exploded from the blade. The light became a spinning horizontal wheel of glowing glyphs with himself at the hub. Assailed by their holy Power, the summoned creatures shrieked and floundered backward.

He didn’t know how badly he’d hurt them, nor did he care. Someone else could finish them off if need be. The important thing was that they didn’t have him tightly surrounded anymore. He ran toward Balasar and his enormous foe.

Flames leaping from its jaws, the crested, wedge-shaped head at the end of the long neck struck like a snake. Balasar managed to sidestep and land a cut three times. But on its fourth bite, the reptile caught the edge of his shield in its fangs. It used that hold to pick him up, whip its neck, and fling him to the side. He slammed down hard and slid, and the beast strode on toward Tarhun. Either it innately understood that the dragonborn monarch was the more important target, or its summoner had so instructed it.

Fortunately, Patrin judged that Balasar had delayed the beast just long enough for him to place himself between the reptile and Tarhun and play the same role his comrade had played. But as he put on a final burst of speed, as he neared the huge creature and saw it even more clearly, doubt suddenly assailed him.

It had nothing to do with fear for his own survival, although obviously that was uncertain in the extreme. Rather, it involved the essential nature of the creature he was about to challenge.

He’d noticed that all the beasts the giant shamans summoned with their crystal globes shared certain characteristics with dragons. All, even the brown, hunched sand things, appeared reptilian. Some possessed acidic spittle or poison breath.

Still, the fiery beast was different. Patrin didn’t think it was a true wyrm, but it was so like one that he wondered if, despite all the manifest reasons to do so, it could be right for a champion of the dragon god to oppose it.

But his uncertainty only lasted a heartbeat. Then came a surge of supernal strength he hadn’t even requested, and with it clarity. He often asked Bahamut for guidance. For once, the god had chosen to provide it, assuring him without the necessity of words that it was, in fact, his sacred duty to battle creatures like the one that loomed before him.

When the reptile struck, it was like a tree or tower falling at him. He leaped aside, which saved his life, but didn’t spare him from the blistering heat the saurian radiated like an oven. Grateful that at least at the moment flame didn’t shroud the thing’s entire crested head, he stepped in, shouted the name of his god, and cut.

Guided by Bahamut’s Power, Patrin’s sword found a place where the creature’s scales overlapped imperfectly. As a result, the stroke bit deeper than any of Balasar’s efforts. The creature jerked its head high. Hot enough to scald, blood showered down. Patrin twisted away to protect his face.

Unfortunately that meant he’d looked away from his foe, and instinct immediately screamed that he’d made a mistake. He sprang from the shadow of the immense foot hurtling down to crush him. Something-the tip of a claw, he realized-snagged the back of his surcoat and started to yank him down onto his back. But then the purple garment ripped instead. He reeled, then caught his balance.

As he turned, the ruined surcoat slid down low enough to hinder the action of his arms or even trip him. It was on fire too. But he didn’t have time to rid himself of it, because his foe was already striking at him again.

He leaped aside, then hurled more of Bahamut’s Power. Silvery light flared from his sword to splash across the side of the reptile’s head. Its neck twisted as it oriented on him once again, but it moved more slowly than before. The god’s Power had robbed it of its quickness.

Patrin tore the tattered, burning surcoat off his body, then dashed past the creature’s head to its body. He thrust, seeking the enormous heart that had to be beating somewhere behind its armor of scales.

The sword drove in deep. But it didn’t stop the beast, which tried to stamp on him. He dodged out from under its foot, slashed the extremity, then glimpsed motion at the periphery of his vision. He turned his head. Blazing jaws open wide, the creature was twisting its neck around for another bite.

Good. Maybe this time, with Bahamut’s Power hindering the saurian, he could put out one of its eyes or even reach the brain behind it.

But then, in midstrike, the creature broke free of the lethargy with which his magic had afflicted it. Suddenly its head was streaking at him twice as fast as before. Caught by surprise, he couldn’t dodge, only attempt to interpose his shield.

It was enough to save his life. But the crashing impact flung him backward and slammed him down onto his back. Flame leaping and rippling across its entire body, his foe reared over him. He lifted his sword to impale whatever part of its body came hammering down to finish him.

Then a feeling of beneficent Power, not the glory of his own deity but surely something akin to it, wrapped around him. The world blinked. Afterward, he was still lying on the ground, but his foe wasn’t right on top of him.

He sat up and looked around. The huge reptile was a little way off, and Medrash was in front of it. He’d used one of Torm’s gifts to trade places with a comrade in distress.

The beast struck. But Medrash wasn’t supine or dazed by the shock of a blow he’d just sustained. He dodged, and his blade sliced across one of the reptile’s slit-pupiled yellow eyes. It shrieked and recoiled.

But then it struck again and would have snapped Medrash’s head off if he hadn’t dropped low at the last possible instant. Patrin scrambled to his feet and charged back into the fight.

Together, he and Medrash gashed their enormous foe with cut after cut and seared it with flare after flare of holy Power. Until Patrin felt himself slowing and his link to Bahamut attenuating to a useless, hollow ache. He insisted to himself that just one more cut or prayer might finish the beast. That it wasn’t as unstoppable as it seemed.

Then sharp, sibilant words, spoken in an esoteric language that even Patrin couldn’t understand, rasped through the air. Like himself, Nala had followed when the rest of the Cadre charged. Now she’d come to help protect the vanquisher.

Swaying back and forth, gripping her staff in both hands, she spun it through a complex series of loops and arcs. Then, on the final syllable of her chant, she thrust the tip at the saurian’s head.

A blast of flame leaped from her weapon, engulfed the beast’s upper body, and flickered out … leaving it unscathed. Head cocked, the reptile regarded Nala with its remaining good eye. Though Patrin had no real idea how intelligent it was, he had the feeling it was laughing at the fool who had attacked it with an element that constituted a part of its essential nature.

If so, then it was still laughing when bright, sizzling lightning leaped from the staff to complete the obliteration of its damaged eye. It convulsed, and Patrin and Medrash scrambled back from its stamping feet and lashing tail.

Next came a burst of fumes that set it retching, and then acid that dissolved scales and ate its way into the muscle beneath. Finally, frost extinguished the last of the flames dancing on its body, painted its head and neck white, and toppled it to the ground.

Patrin watched it, making sure it wasn’t going to get up again, then turned to see if anything else was threatening Tarhun. Nothing was, and appearing essentially intact, Balasar was clambering to his feet.

Patrin realized it was a glorious moment. Torm and Bahamut sometimes battled side by side against evil gods and devils. Their earthly champions had just done the same and, by combining forces, had staved off a calamity. Then his beloved Nala had used her own divine gifts to administer the killing stroke to their foe. He gave Medrash a grin.

His fellow paladin smiled back, and Patrin judged that it was a genuine expression of good will. Medrash was incapable of withholding gratitude and camaraderie in such circumstances. But his feelings weren’t wholehearted-there was ambivalence behind his eyes as well. Dismay that they’d needed Bahamut’s Power to achieve their victory.

Curse it, why couldn’t the Daardendrien just get over his prejudice? Why couldn’t he accept that he and his fellow paladin were the same?

Maybe he just needs more time, Patrin thought. Then, as Nala stood panting and leaning on her staff, Balasar stumbled up behind her and planted a heavy hand on her shoulder.

Nala tried to slow her breathing. It wasn’t easy; her masters would have scowled to see her struggle so simply to compose herself. But the assault on the redspawn had been as taxing a feat of magic as she’d ever attempted.

Suddenly something grabbed her shoulder, transferring a goodly portion of its weight to her slumping frame. Startled, sure an ash giant or one of their minions had crept up behind her, she let out a squawk and lurched around.

The hand maintained its grip. Still, her motion brought her face to face with Balasar. Both sides of his face were bloody. The right bore its self-inflicted cut, and the left was raw where being tossed had scraped it against the ground and torn out a couple of his white button piercings.

She could tell from the lopsided way he carried himself that other portions of his body were bruised and sore as well. Good. She prayed he was injured worse than he appeared. That he’d drop dead of it.

Because she didn’t trust him. Perhaps that was unjust, for he’d passed his initiation. But there was a smug, impudent lightness to his character seldom seen in those who sought out her deity’s altar. And earlier he’d fed the hysteria simmering inside her soldiers, prompting them to disobey her command. Maybe it had been true divine inspiration impelling him to act-and granted, since the charge had resulted in Tarhun’s rescue, things had worked out fairly well. But she still didn’t like it, and he’d just compounded his other offenses by compromising her dignity.

Which didn’t change the fact that she needed Patrin, and Patrin liked him. Or the truth that she could scarcely rebuff one of the warriors who’d risked himself to save the vanquisher. Not with other people watching.

She arranged her face into a mask of concern, then asked, “Are you all right?”

“I hurt,” Balasar croaked. “But if you can spare a healing spell, I think I can get back into it.” He jerked his head at the combat raging on every side. Nala was no war leader, but it looked to her like the dragonborn and ash giants had at some point thrown just about everything they had at one another.

“Of course.” Refusing to give in to her exhaustion, murmuring a prayer, Nala reached into the void and drew stinging, bracing Power into her core. Responsive to her true feelings, or her deity’s, it tried to twist itself into poison. But she shaped it into vitality, then clasped the Daardendrien’s shoulder as he was still clasping hers.

He shivered and squinched his eyes shut as the magic flowed into him. Then he straightened up and smiled. “Thank you, my lady. Thank you more than you know.” He stooped, picked up the targe he’d evidently set on the ground, and turned to Medrash. “Kinsman, someone should get the vanquisher out of the middle of this. You could make sure he doesn’t die on us, and then pull some of your followers out of the battle to help escort him. I think they might respond to orders faster than warriors of the Cadre. Will you help me?”

Medrash frowned like he no longer wanted Balasar claiming him as kin. But then he gave a nod and said, “Of course.”

Standing guard, Balasar stayed on his feet while Medrash kneeled beside the unconscious Tarhun. On first inspection, it didn’t look like the warlord was too badly burned inside his armor. At any rate he was still breathing, and that was the main thing.

Medrash reached out to Torm. The god’s Power was as boundless as ever, but he’d virtually exhausted his capacity to channel it. He had to focus intently and strain to draw down even a trickle.

When he had it, he touched Tarhun’s face where his helm didn’t cover, resting his fingertips among the square golden studs. The point of contact glowed as the Power passed from his body into the vanquisher’s. Without waking, Tarhun let out a sigh.

Medrash started to rise. “Wait,” Balasar said, pitching his voice low enough that no one any farther away could have heard it over the crashing, howling din of battle. “Pretend you’re still working on him.”

Considering that they were supposed to have had a falling-out, Medrash had wondered why Balasar requested his help in particular. Now he realized that his clan brother had manufactured an opportunity to confer with him. “What’s going on?” he murmured back.

“I don’t know if you can tell it from here,” Balasar said, “but I could, from the spot where the red thing tossed me. This fight could go either way, and we still have troops we haven’t committed.”

“Because Tarhun never had the chance to order them in.”

“Partly, I suppose. But also because some of them are the other mounted squadrons Khouryn trained. They’re scared to go in. But they don’t have to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m pretty sure Nala used countermagic to interfere with the charms that made your horses brave and biddable. And that when the Cadre charged into battle, she stashed the talisman she used in here.”

Balasar pivoted his shield outward like a door swinging on its hinges, revealing the beaded pigskin bag clutched in his offhand. Because he currently had his back to Patrin and Nala, neither of them would be able to see.

Medrash recognized the bag from his time traveling with the wyrm-worshipers on Black Ash Plain. Nala had worn it on her belt and used it to hold items employed in her spellcasting.

“I’m no cutpurse,” Balasar said, “but she was spent and not especially observant when I was hanging on her. With luck, she’ll think she dropped it when she was running around fighting.”

“You say you’re pretty sure.”

“Have you ever known me to guess wrong when it truly counted?”

“Yes. But stay with Tarhun.” Medrash rose to fetch some of his followers.

They fashioned a litter from lances and surcoats, then-keeping as far away from potential threats as possible-carried Tarhun from the field. Once they’d entrusted him to the healers, Balasar hurried back toward the heart of the battle. Medrash strode in the direction of the nearest company of horsemen.

By the time he reached them, they were dismounting, preparing to advance and fight on foot in the traditional dragonborn manner. “Wait!” he cried.

Prexijandilin Jhiri turned around. Crimson-eyed with umber hide, she had enameled primroses pierced into her cheeks and the tips of the long, ropy scales that made up her crest. Medrash had always considered the flower an incongruous emblem for such a warlike clan.

Jhiri looked momentarily surprised to see him away from his command, or maybe just to see him still alive. Then she said, “I know there haven’t been any orders, but I don’t care. We’re needed, and we’re going.”

“Good,” he replied. “But go on horseback, not on foot.”

She shook her head. “We saw what happened to you.”

“There was a reason for that.” But as much as he wanted to share the details, it would be unwise to accuse Nala without proof. “A counterspell weakened the enchantment that makes the horses obey. But someone took care of it.”

Jhiri eyed him dubiously. “Or maybe our charms just don’t work as well as we hoped.”

“Curse it, you and your followers have already fought giants from horseback. Successfully.”

“When we skirmished with a raiding party. Maybe the mounts can handle that, but not a clash of armies.”

He wished he could cloak himself in a bit of Torm’s majesty to make his arguments more compelling. But for the moment that was impossible. All he had were his own wits and powers of persuasion.

Glad that it was easier to see what was happening from the fringes, he pointed at the battle raging in front of them. “Look there. See how the giants’ flank is exposed. Imagine how badly we could hurt them if we circled around and charged.”

Jhiri frowned, pondering, then shook her head. “No, I won’t risk it.”

“Then I will.” Medrash turned and swung himself up onto a dismounted rider’s roan gelding. The warrior gaped at him in surprise. “Since you’re not planning to use it, or this either.” He pulled the lance from the fellow’s hand.

“What are you doing?” Jhiri asked.

“I hope that you at least aren’t averse to using the horses to get close to the enemy. So here’s the plan: I’ll ride ahead of the rest of you. When we get close, I’ll charge. If my horse does what he should, and yours don’t show any signs of balking, you charge after me. Otherwise, abandon your mounts and engage the enemy on foot.”

“Khouryn said that charging together is-”

“The moving wall. I remember. But it’s my risk, not yours. So, are you game?”

Jhiri shrugged. “When you put it that way, why not?” She turned and shouted, “Mount up!”

As the riders maneuvered, some of the hunched brown creatures assailed them with blasts of sand. Medrash actually welcomed the harassment, because the horses bore it without panicking. He hoped it had a beneficial effect on the confidence of the warriors riding behind him. In truth, he himself was glad to see a bit of evidence that Balasar’s hunch was correct.

Although the real test was yet to come. He turned the roan toward the massed giants. Patting the animal’s neck, he said, “Do this, and I’ll bring you apples for the rest of your days.” Then he urged the steed into motion.

The roan moved forward, picking up speed until he was galloping, never wavering. The giants were busy watching or fighting other foes, and the horse covered a surprising amount of distance before anyone noticed him. Then one of the barbarians pivoted and hurled a big flint hatchet.

Medrash raised his shield, angled in such a way that the weapon ought to glance off. As it did, although the impact still jolted him back in the saddle.

Despite the bang, the horse still didn’t balk. Medrash couched his lance.

The giant who’d thrown the hatchet tried to dodge. Medrash compensated by nudging the roan with his knee. The lance punched into the middle of the barbarian’s chest, and his long gray legs with their knobby knees folded beneath him.

Medrash tried to jerk the lance free, but it was buried too deep, and that and his own momentum tore the shaft from his grip. As he hurtled onward, a lone rider with foes towering on every side, he snatched his sword from its scabbard.

A spear jabbed at the horse’s flank, and he had to lean sideways to catch the thrust on his shield. As he heaved himself upright again, a sort of flail-rocks in a leather mesh bag-whirled at him. Somehow he shifted the battered heater quickly enough to catch that blow as well.

He slashed at the spine of a giant that still had its back to him. Unfortunately, that was the last one slow to react to his intrusion. Others moved in from every side. He wheeled his mount, looking for a way through. He couldn’t find one.

Then, hooves pounding, lances making cracking sounds when they snapped, Jhiri’s charge smashed into the giants. It really was like a racing wall with long spikes sticking out, and for an instant as it hurtled forward, Medrash felt a pang of fear that it would sweep him away along with the hulking foes surrounding him. It didn’t, though. By dint of Khouryn’s training or simple luck, the nearest riders galloped past without spearing or running into him.

When he looked at the slaughter they left in their wake, he suddenly felt certain that even without the vanquisher to lead them, the dragonborn were going to carry the day.