Meanwhile the guard pummeled him in turn, while also trying to break his hold and squirm out from underneath him. Until the punching stopped.
Probably because the guard had decided to reach for a knife. Something about the way his body shifted told Gaedynn which hand was doing the reaching. He twisted. The guard’s arm brushed across his chest as the first stab missed.
The next one likely wouldn’t. Bellowing, Gaedynn put all his strength and weight behind another blow to the face. Bone crunched, and the guard went limp.
But Gaedynn could still hear breath whistling in and out of his foe’s nose. He groped, found the guard’s neck with both hands, and squeezed.
“Are you all right?” Jhesrhi asked.
“Fine,” he panted. “Just finishing up. How about you?”
“Just scraped and bruised, I imagine. I thought my only hope was to shove him to where you could reach them, but then I couldn’t reach him anymore.”
“Don’t worry about it. You gave me all the help I needed.” He loosened his grip. The whistling didn’t resume. “Let’s find out what sort of presents your admirer brought us.”
He patted his way down the guard’s body. He found the knife, the scimitar his adversary hadn’t been able to use fighting at such close quarters, and then the metal ring clipped to his belt. When he felt what was attached to it, he caught his breath.
“What is it?”
He slipped the key into the shackle on his left wrist and twisted it. The lock clicked and the heavy metal ring hitched open. “Proof that Lady Luck might actually love me almost as much as I deserve.” He rid himself of the other shackle. “Talk, so I can find you without bumping into you.”
“My name is Jhesrhi Coldcreek. I’m a wizard and an officer in the Brotherhood of the Griffon. The name of my own griffon is-”
“Good enough.” He reached and found that she had her arms outstretched. The key fit her shackles too.
She murmured a word of command and conjured a glowing amber ball into the palm of her upturned hand. At first it dazzled him and made him squint, but when his eyes adjusted, he could see for himself that she was disheveled but unharmed. He felt the urge to hug her but caught himself in time.
The light revealed that the guard had been an orc. By rights one such creature shouldn’t pose much of a problem for a soldier who’d stood against wraiths, nightwalkers, and the steel scorpion of Anhaurz, and Gaedynn grinned at the thought that this foe had given him one of the most desperate fights he’d ever fought.
“What are you smirking at?” Jhesrhi asked.
“I’ll tell you later. Look, somehow we managed to dance with the guard without overturning either of our bowls. So drink and eat. We’re going to need it.”
After he finished his own meal, he appropriated the orc’s weapons and-his mouth twisted in distaste-the brigandine. The reinforced leather stank of the brutish warrior’s sweat, but armor was armor.
As he buckled it on and found he couldn’t tighten the straps enough to make it snug on his lean frame, he asked, “Can you disguise us?”
“To a degree,” Jhesrhi said. “But we’ll never find a way out without light.”
“I know. But since Jaxanaedegor’s more or less a grandee of the realm, maybe he has servants or occasional visitors who need light as much as we do. If so, then using it won’t necessarily unmask us.”
“We can hope.” She set the orb of light afloat in midair as if she were setting it on a shelf. Then she murmured a rhyming incantation and stroked her fingertips from the midline of her face outward like she was streaking it with paint. When she did the same to Gaedynn, his cheeks and forehead tingled.
“There,” she said.
He looked at his hands. They appeared clean, pale, and devoid of hair. Tattoos peeked out from under the sleeves of what now appeared to be a finely made mail shirt with hammered brass runes and sigils riveted to the links.
Jhesrhi was tattooed and hairless too, even her eyebrows and lashes shed to leave her bald as an egg. Her golden eyes had changed to a less distinctive gray, and the patched, ragged garb of Ilzza the vagabond had become a crimson robe.
“We’re Thayans,” he said.
“Supposedly Szass Tam sometimes sends envoys to the lords of Threskel. If so, then Jaxanaedegor’s lesser servants have learned to bow and scrape to them. They also wouldn’t expect them to know their way around. Both those things could work to our advantage. So I’m a Red Wizard and you’re my knight.”
He smiled. “Almost like real life.”
Thanks to the golden glow, it was now plain that Jaxanaedegor’s servants had imprisoned them in a hollow where a dozen sets of shackles dangled from the walls. A single passage ran away into the dark. Jhesrhi sent the light drifting in that direction, and she and Gaedynn followed.
As they paced along, he kept hoping for a branching passage. Because there was a guard station, barracks, or something similar up ahead. He hadn’t been able to see it in the dark, but he’d heard the murmur of voices as the vampires marched Jhesrhi and him back and forth.
But it appeared fickle Tymora had forgotten him again. Or, to be fair, maybe it was a bit much to ask her to reach back in time, trespass in the business of Kossuth and Grumbar, and alter the way lava carved rifts in the volcano just to smooth his path. In any case, no alternate route presented itself before he heard voices once again and caught the smells of wood smoke and roasting meat. His hunk of stale bread hadn’t been all that big or satisfying, and the latter aroma made his mouth water.
“They’re going to think it odd that two Thayans are coming out of the prison,” Jhesrhi whispered.
“Especially when they didn’t notice two Thayans going in,” Gaedynn answered. “That’s assuming they bother to think about it. Maybe they won’t. But if they do, well, you’re magical and too important and arrogant to take kindly to answering questions from the likes of them.”
“Right.” They walked on.
The way widened, and openings led off the passage to interconnecting chambers on either side. Taken altogether, the honeycomb was large enough for a garrison of dozens, but Gaedynn was glad to see there didn’t appear to be that many warriors currently.
There was at least one, though. Frowning, a one-eyed orc peered out into the passage. Gaedynn gave him a stare, and he retreated into the darkness. But as soon as the supposed Thayans passed by, the guard shouted something in the language of his kind. Gaedynn didn’t speak it, but assumed the echoing call pertained to Jhesrhi and himself.
Other voices replied, and footsteps scurried. Five other orcs emerged from openings up ahead, then gathered together to form a single group.
It didn’t look like they meant to attack. Not yet anyway. But they evidently didn’t intend to let the strangers pass without a word or two of explanation either.
Still, it didn’t seem all that dire a situation until the light floated close enough to show them clearly. Then Gaedynn saw that while four were warriors, one wore a voluminous robe and carried a staff. He was some sort of sorcerer or shaman, and likely more cunning and difficult to bluff than his fellows.
Oh well. Gaedynn would just have to strive for words that flew as true as Keen-Eye’s arrows.
When Jhesrhi and he came close enough to converse without difficulty, he gave a brusque nod. “We’ll return to our accommodations now.”
“Accommodations?” the shaman asked. He spoke Chessentan without an accent, and although his staff was carved of shadow-wood rather than blackwood and the rune-engraved rings that banded it at intervals were made of some exotic red metal instead of gold, it appeared as handsomely crafted and civilized an artifact as the one Jhesrhi had lost in Mourktar.
“The quarters Lord Jaxanaedegor assigned to Lady Azhir,” Gaedynn said.
One of the soldier orcs turned to mutter in the sorcerer’s pointed ear. In the process, he gave Gaedynn a better look at the longbow he carried on his back. It was as superbly made as the staff, and to Gaedynn as enticing as the smell of the roasting meat.