Clutching Esprл close to his chest, Kandler ducked through the doorway after the others. “Hold it!” he said as he burst into the narrow alley between the platforms.
Xalt misjudged Kandler’s abrupt stop and slammed into the justicar’s back as he emerged from the tiny room. Kandler, Esprл, and the warforged went down on the gangway in a tangle of metallic and fleshy limbs.
Kandler struggled to his feet, Esprл still hanging around his neck. “Burch!” he shouted. “Sallah! Comeback!”
The shifter and the lady knight were already out of sight and apparently earshot. Kandler reached back and helped Xalt to his feet. “Damned shifter temper!” the justicar said.
He held Esprл to him and started off after his friend.
Kandler glanced back at Xalt. “Where are they headed?” he asked the artificer.
“In the wrong direction,” Xalt said as he trotted along behind the justicar.
“Why’s that?” asked Esprл. Hanging on Kandler’s neck, she could see right over his shoulder to the warforged.
“That way lies the arena, the main barracks, and Bastard’s headquarters,” Xalt said. “This is suicide! We should let them go and save ourselves.”
As Kandler leaped over a warforged who Burch and Sallah must have knocked down a moment before, he squeezed Esprл tight, and she hugged him back. He wondered if Xalt was right. He’d risked so much to rescue his daughter. Was he throwing it away now?
“What do you think?” he asked Esprл.
“No!” Esprл said. “You don’t leave friends behind.”
“That’s my girl.” Kandler grinned as he stiff-armed a warforged that leaped out from a nearby intersection. “I sure miss your mother.”
Esprл kissed Kandler on the cheek. “Me, too,” she said softly.
As he ran, Kandler kept catching and then losing sight of Sallah and Burch as they chased Te’oma deeper into the city. The canny changeling kept ducking down side passages, turning back and forth as often as she could, never giving the shifter the time to bring her down with a well-aimed bolt.
From up ahead, Kandler heard a dull noise, like the murmur of a thousand tinny voices. As he got closer, an excited roar went up.
“Are we ready to give up?” Xalt said from behind.
Kandler heard a tremor in warforged’s voice.
“Never!” Esprл shouted back at the artificer. The justicar just held her tighter and smiled.
They turned a final corner, and there-across an open set of platforms that formed a barren sort of park, complete with low benches but missing plants or trees-a huge wall appeared before him, at least forty feet high. The noise came from behind it. The wall stretched almost entirely across the city, leaving perhaps a single column of platforms untouched on either side of it. Open portals pierced it at regular intervals, each standing empty. Kandler saw the backs of his friends disappear through the portal straight in front of him, which formed a long, dark tunnel. A moment later a roar went up from the other side of the wall.
“By the forge that made me,” Xalt said, reaching out his good hand to slow Kandler down. “Tell me they didn’t go in there.”
The warforged dragged the justicar to a stop and stared up at the wall with his jaw wide open. The structure stood four stories tall and stretched from one edge of the city to the other, at least a hundred yards across at this point. With the exception of the tunnels that ran through its base at regular intervals, it was a solid wall of graying tarpaulins stretched taut over an intricate wooden frame, the outlines of which were visible beneath the thick, oiled canvas.
Kandler spun back at the stunned artificer. “What is it?” he said.
The warforged didn’t seem to hear him.
“Xalt!” the justicar said. “What’s through there?”
“This is bad,” Xalt said. “Not just bad. Awful.”
Kandler stepped into the artificer’s face. “Can you be more specific?”
Xalt brought his obsidian eyes back down to look at Kandler. He focused on the justicar as if he were seeing him for the first time. “It’s the arena,” the artificer said. “And from the sound of it, there’s a match going on.”
Kandler closed his eyes.
“What is it?” Esprл said as she turned around in his arms to stare at Xalt. “What’s going to happen to Burch and Sallah?”
The justicar kissed the girl’s cheek, never taking his eyes from the artificer. “How many warforged in there?” he asked.
Xalt shook his head. “That must be why the streets are so empty.”
“How many, Xalt?”
The greaser spoke slowly, as if waking from a deep sleep. “A few score at least. Hundreds? Maybe more.”
Kandler grimaced as another roar sounded from inside the arena.
Esprл pulled back from Kandler’s neck and sat on his hip. She furrowed her brow at him. “What’s going to happen to them?” she asked.
Kandler looked back at her, and her eyes were as blue and wide as he had ever seen them. He reached up with his free arm and brushed the blonde hair back from the elf-girl’s face. Even in the Mournland’s half-light, it seemed to glitter.
“I just found you,” he whispered.
Kandler kissed Esprл on her forehead and handed her to Xalt.
“Get her out of here,” he said. “Take her someplace safe till things quiet down, then get her back to Deothen.”
Xalt nodded as the girl slid from Kandler’s arms and grabbed his thick, three-fingered hand. She bit her lip and said, “Wait! I can help.”
Kandler shook his head. “The world needs you safe,” he said, “but our friends need me.” He drew his sword and stared down the black tunnel toward the circle of dim light at the other end. “I have to go.”
“Wait!” Xalt said. “What is the plan? What are you going to do?”
Kandler glanced back over his shoulder as he left and said, “I’ll be damned if I know.”
Chapter 49
As Kandler reached the end of the tarpaulin-lined tunnel, he saw Burch and Sallah racing into the middle of a sawdust-floored open area that seemed to stretch on forever. The shifter loosed his crossbow at something above, and Kandler poked his head out of the tunnel to see Te’oma flapping away on her cloak, which had transformed once again into batlike wings.
The justicar craned his head around to see the entire arena. Rough-hewn bleachers lined both of the longer sides of the place, each of which stood behind a system of split-rail fencing that kept the crowd separated from the arena floor. Hundreds of warforged stood in them and stared at the shifter and the knight who had just barreled into the place.
For a moment, it seemed that the observers thought the intruders were part of the show, but when Burch’s errant bolt sailed into the stands on the opposite side of the arena, the crowd leaped to its feet and roared in outrage. In the center of the arena, two of the largest warforged Kandler had ever seen turned from where they had put a halt to their fight and stomped toward the intruders.
“What in the name of the Silver Flame are those?” Kandler heard Sallah shout to Burch as she pointed at the massive creatures. They looked something like a warforged, but they stood over twenty feet tall, even hunched over. The plates of armor that formed their skin were each at least an inch thick, and foot-long spikes rose from their backplates and the backs of their limbs. In place of hands, their arms terminated in massive weapons. The right was a massive hammer made of battered granite. The left was an axe-head nearly as tall as a man.
As the creatures lumbered toward Burch and Sallah, they rasped their weapon-hands together. The edges of their steel axes drew huge lines of sparks from their hammers’ stony surfaces.
“Titans!” Burch exclaimed.
The arena floor shook with the massive creatures’ every tread.
Kandler glanced behind him and saw a squad of five war-forged warriors stomping up the tunnel behind him. “So much for the stealthy route,” he said to himself before dashing out to join Burch and Sallah on the arena floor.