"You scaly little idiot!" Rikali screamed when she realized what he had done. The light revealed the anger on her face. Her skin looked like smooth alabaster in the fire's glow, her wide eyes a pale watery blue outlined heavily with kohl, her lips thin and painted crimson. She snarled to reveal a row of tiny, pointed teeth, so small and uniform they looked filed. "You're worthless!"
Before she could reach the fire and attempt to put it out, it had begun to spread, racing along the floor on the scattered straw, then jumping from bale to bale. The horses' nostrils flared in fright. They were neighing anxiously in their stalls, pulling on the ropes that held them. The fire was spreading toward the animals, was spreading toward everything, and Rikali's efforts to stamp it out were ineffectual.
"Mai!" Rikali called. "We have another problem! Fetch decided to burn down the buildin'."
Maldred continued humming.
Cries of "Fire!" resounded outside. A dwarf hollered to start a bucket brigade. Another was yelling to leave the blaze be, to let it kill the thieves who would steal from the wounded Knights who risked their lives to save the town from the goblin army.
Dhamon had the two largest horses saddled and was returning to select another one or two. He sucked in his breath when he heard one of the center beams groan and saw the flames rising. "Riki!" Dhamon hollered. "Saddle one more for you and Fetch. Be quick."
She grumbled but complied, futilely kicking dirt on the flames as she turned and made a grab for a saddle. An axe splintered the door. She decided bareback was a better idea. Coughing and blinded, she cried out. Fetch tugged on her cloak.
"Sorry," he said. "Didn't think about the fire spreading. Wanted to try out that fire spell Mai taught me."
"You're always wantin' to try that spell."
"Just wanted everyone to see better."
She reached down and grabbed him about the waist, hoisted him up onto the horse, then got on behind him. "Shut up," she said. "Just shut up and hold on." She snatched the rope of another horse and jabbed her mount in the ribs with her boot heels, urging it forward and tugging the other one to follow. The other ponies were fighting their ropes, rearing frantically in the face of the fire and billowing smoke. The sound of the panicked animals and the crackling flames, the hacking of the axes against the front door, the shouts of the dwarves and of Rig and Fiona all made it difficult for her to think. "Dhamon!" Rikali screamed. "I can't see you. Dhamon!"
Dhamon followed her voice and managed to grab her horse and lead it to the back, where he began loading up the other horse with the sacks that had been in the wagon. Rikali was coughing deeply, Fetch, too, and Dhamon's eyes stung from all the smoke.
Then Dhamon spun and ran to retrieve his own precious plunder, relying on his memory as the smoke and flames obscured everything.
"I've got the door down!" Rig's voice called. "Help me move this wagon!"
"Thieves! Let them burn!"
There was a dwarf's voice-staccato and commanding-shouting orders. Voices swelled with the billowing smoke, angry and curious and filled with fear and outrage. A Legion of Steel Knight issued orders to his men.
Maldred was humming louder, his fingers moving faster, dancing in the air now. His fingers beckoned to the nails as they worked themselves out of the wood, the planks groaning in the process. The air all around was hot, the flames were growing wilder behind him. The wagon shifted, dwarves and Knights spilled inside, and some were immediately trampled by horses trying to escape.
Dhamon hoisted the leather sack onto the largest horse and thrust the reins into Maldred's hand. He struggled to slip on the backpack and heaved himself into the saddle of the other horse.
Maldred formed a fist with his free hand and struck the back wall of the barn. The wood groaned a final time, then the entire back wall of the stable began to topple.
In an instant the world was consumed by fire and chaos, and by heat as intense as red dragon's breath. The great gout of fresh air fed the flames, sending them dancing into the upper reaches, into the hayloft, onto the thatch roof. A hellish orange blaze devoured the wood and sent a billowing mass of thick gray smoke high into the night sky. The fireball chased Rig, the Knights, and the dwarves back outside, where they gasped and choked.
"Dhamon!" Rig's voice. Then Fiona's. But the words were drowned out by the thundering hooves of their stolen mounts as Dhamon, Rikali, Maldred, and Fetch escaped Ironspike, driving a handful of freed horses and ponies before them.
"So hot," Rikali moaned. She shuddered as she looked over her shoulder at the fire that had spread from the town's stable to a half-dozen other buildings. "I stink with smoke. I've blisters on my arms. My face! Fetch, is it…"
"Your face is lovely as ever, Riki, though that garish stuff you paint on your eyes is running down your cheeks like black rain. Hey, my robe!" Fetch started squirming. The hem had caught on fire. He slapped at it with his diminutive hands.
Rikali hissed and helped him put it out. "Worthless," she pronounced. "Absolutely worthless, Fetch."
"Sorry," he answered. "But at least nobody'll be following us. Ponies and horses are either dead or long gone. The humans have nothing to ride. Dwarves are gonna be trying to put out the fire rather than worrying about us. Gonna have to work hard to keep the whole town from burning. Summer's made everything so dry. Water's not so plentiful."
"The Knights, though" Rikali suggested.
"Yeah, the Legion of Steel Knights aren't gonna forget that their wounded brothers were robbed. Them, we can worry about."
The four didn't slow their horses until the fire and smoke were far behind, the scent of the blaze a memory, and a rose-petal dawn was creeping over the sky.
The land that stretched directly before them was barren and scrubby and flat. There were clumps of prairie grass, scattered like tufts of hair on a balding man. They were dry and rustling in the scant breeze, and balls of dried weeds spun recklessly across the quartet's path. Summer, never kind to Khur, had been especially brutal this year- the rains more infrequent than usual, the temperature higher, the wind too slight to grant any measure of relief.
A little distance to the west the scenery changed dramatically. Foothills rose toward the towering Kalkhist Mountains, jagged and imposing upthrusts of granite shielded by steel-gray clouds There were a scattering of stunted oaks and bushes. All of the plants looked like they were dying, except for the aromatic gray-green sage that thrived in such heat.
Maldred shrugged out of his shirt, tying it about his waist. His muscles gleamed with sweat. He tugged one of the waterskins free from his belt, drained it, and snatched free another, which he passed to Dhamon.
Dhamon looked thin riding next to Maldred, and his ropy muscles were dwarfed by the big man's thick arms, barrel chest, and square shoulders. Some of his cuts had been healed completely by the hospital's medicine, but the deeper ones had opened during the fight in town and glistened with oozing blood.
"Rikali," Maldred called, "you didn't need to scratch him quite so much."
"You said Dhamon had to look in a bad way," she cut back. "You said he needed to be convincing."
"Not that convincing," Maldred softly returned.
She shrugged, tossing her thick mass of hair. "Dhamon didn't complain."
"I was more than convincing," Dhamon admitted to the big man. "I should've pulled it off without a hitch. I'm not sure just what went wrong. I hadn't taken into account that patient dying, I guess."
Maldred grinned and lowered his voice. "Yours was the riskier venture in town. The rest of us robbed closed businesses. Besides, it added a little excitement in our lives. No harm done to us. And we've fine horses to show for it." He took a long look at Dhamon and sniffed. "You need some new clothes, my friend. Rikali pretty well shredded those, and they… stink. All of us could do with some new outfits. I doubt the smoke will leave these."