Which was to say, to a gray wasteland where only sparse grass and twisted shrubs grew and smoke rose from cracks in the ground. The air stank of combustion, and drifting flecks of ash stung the eye. To either side towered freestanding columns of solidified ash. Though as a dwarf, Khouryn had a reasonable knowledge of earth, stone, and fire, he couldn’t imagine what natural process created the things. Or set a couple of the more distant ones sliding like tokens on a game board without toppling over or breaking apart. It couldn’t be the wind. They were moving in opposite directions.
Riding on Khouryn’s left, Balasar turned his head and smiled. “Like the scenery?”
“I’ve seen it before,” Khouryn answered, and that was more or less true. He’d traveled the Dustroad. But it had become clear that if a person kept to the highway, he never quite found out just how strange and unwelcoming these particular badlands actually were.
The Lance Defenders were on the road or near it, where they hoped to engage the largest horde of ash giants. Like most of the companies fielded by one clan or another, the thirty Daardendrien warriors and their one dwarf ally were ranging through the heart of the barrens to intercept smaller bands of enemy raiders before they reached the dragonborn lands beyond.
Riding on the other side of Balasar, his black surcoat marked with the six white circles of Daardendrien but his heater shield bearing the right-hand gauntlet emblem of Torm, Medrash asked, “Are you sorry you came?”
Khouryn assumed some note of glumness or sourness in his voice had prompted the question. “I won’t be if our side defeats the giants fast enough for me to pay a visit home.”
But he suspected that was unlikely. And as for the notion that he might penetrate sinister secrets opaque to everyone else, well, that had seemed a little plausible back in Djerad Thymar, when he was a little drunk. But now that he’d sobered up it seemed ridiculous, and not just because a fellow wasn’t apt to learn much about schemes and conspiracies while stuck in the middle of a godscursed wasteland.
Khouryn knew he was far from stupid. He understood warfare and siegecraft better than almost anyone he’d ever met. And he could concoct a clever battlefield ruse when the situation called for it. But in the main, he thought in a straightforward manner ill suited to unraveling intrigues.
To the Abyss with it, he thought. I’ll stick with Medrash and Balasar for the length of this patrol. But then, unless I’ve found a better reason to stay, I’m heading back to Chessenta.
Balasar pointed. “Look.”
A speck moved across the hazy sky. Khouryn squinted and could just make out that it was a Lance Defender riding one of the giant bats. A scout or messenger, he assumed. The sight gave him a fresh pang of sadness for the loss of his own winged mount.
The Lance Defender plunged earthward.
“Is he diving?” Balasar asked
“No,” Khouryn said. A bat didn’t fly exactly the same as a griffon, but he was still sure he knew how to interpret what he was seeing. “His mount is hurt. Shot from below, I imagine. It isn’t dead, at least not yet, but it can’t stay in the air. He’s trying to put it on the ground before its strength gives out.”
And maybe the rider succeeded. It appeared to Khouryn that the bat wasn’t quite plummeting when it vanished behind a low rise.
“We have to get to him.” Medrash kicked his horse into a canter, and everyone else followed his lead.
They rode most of the way to the rise, then dismounted. Leaving a couple of warriors behind to guard the horses, they stalked up the slope on foot. Khouryn had learned that given a choice, dragonborn rarely fought on horseback, and maybe his companions hoped a quieter approach would catch any enemies by surprise.
Whatever they were thinking, he was glad to be on his own two feet again. He could manage his enormous mare under normal circumstances, but if he tried to do so in the midst of battle, he might well get the both of them killed.
He peered over the top of the rise. The bat lay crumpled a stone’s throw beyond the base of the shallow descent on the other side. An arrow the size of a javelin protruded from the animal’s flank. Neither it nor the dragonborn slumped on its back were moving. Nor were the three pillars of ash looming in a semicircle behind them.
“Is he alive?” Balasar whispered.
Medrash whispered a prayer. For a moment, power warmed the air. “Yes. I feel his thoughts. But I think he’s badly injured.”
“Where’s the tail-waggling son of a toad that shot him?”
“That I can’t tell.”
“Even a giant could hide behind one of those spires,” Khouryn said. “But that’s just a guess. The enemy could be anywhere, and there may be more than just a lone archer.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Medrash said. “I have to get down there if the Lance Defender is to have any chance of living.” He stood up straight and headed down the hillside.
“What about my chances of living?” said Balasar to his clan brother’s back. But he followed without hesitation. So did Khouryn and everyone else.
Peering one way and another, weapons at the ready, they prowled halfway down the slope. Then the column of ash to their right shuddered. Grit broke off and showered down the sides. Then it slid forward.
“We’ve got an adept!” Medrash shouted. He meant a giant shaman capable of magically pushing the spires around to serve as ponderous but powerful weapons.
Though few dragonborn possessed a knack for spellcasting, the Daardendriens had brought along one of the exceptions, an old fellow with a scarred snout and bronze scales who wore six wands sheathed on his belt like a collection of daggers. He drew one carved of alexandrite, greenish in the light here, pointed and spiral-cut to resemble a unicorn’s horn. He stabbed it at the advancing column and snarled words of power.
The spire kept coming. As Khouryn tried to predict its course and poised himself to dodge as need be, he thought, I’ll bet Jhesrhi could stop it.
At which point it did stop, and he decided he hadn’t given the dragonborn sorcerer enough credit. Then the pillar shredded apart, the demolition proceeding from top to bottom as quickly as a sword stroke.
It filled the air with much more ash than before. Khouryn felt like he was choking on the stuff, and his smarting eyes were so filled with tears that he could barely see.
Balasar coughed. “The giants have learned a new trick.”
It hurt, but Khouryn forced himself to take a deep breath anyway. So he could shout. “They’re coming! Be ready!”
A dragonborn started to curse, and then the obscenity warped into a scream. If not for the warning, Khouryn might never have noticed another spire gliding in on his left.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard to dodge if you did see it coming and had somewhere to go. But he winced to imagine such a weapon plowing and crushing its way through a close formation of infantry.
He jabbed it with his spear as it shuddered past. He didn’t really expect the attack to accomplish anything, and as far as he could tell it didn’t. The pillar didn’t fall over or anything like that.
The dragonborn wizard began another incantation. Peering through the murk of floating ash, Khouryn saw that the magus had swapped out the alexandrite wand for one made of rose red phenalope. He jabbed it insistently at the ground as he recited, in a manner that reminded Khouryn of someone ordering a dog off a piece of furniture.
The spire crumbled. That had the unfortunate consequence of setting even more ash adrift in the air, but the wizard wasn’t done. He recited a final rhyming couplet, and all the gray-black flakes and particles fell to the ground like they’d become as heavy as lead.
The sorcerer smiled a fierce reptilian smile of satisfaction. Then an arrow as big as the one that had felled the bat punched into the center of his chest. He collapsed, the red wand tumbling from his hand.