The Xarundi whirled and grabbed Wynn, hauling him up by the collar and using him as a shield. The quints tried to flank their enemy but were unable to get a shot that wouldn’t harm Wynn as well. As he turned his shield to face his attackers, the Xarundi turned his back on Tiadaria. A momentary advantage was all she needed, and she sprang forward. The beast whirled, its claws extended, but Tia dropped and slid, screaming as her cracked ribs grated against each other. She drew her blade across the living leg as she slid. Blood spilled on the cobblestones.
She had hoped to sever the tendons behind the knee, but she missed. Fortunately, the resulting gash was deep enough that the Xarundi howled in pain and rage and tossed Wynn aside. Tia heard flesh tear as the creature’s claws raked down the young man’s face as he fell. Tia didn’t have a chance to check on Wynn, instead she danced into striking range, intending to strike a killing blow to the creature who had been responsible for the Captain’s death.
The Xarundi knocked the attacking quints away with another spell burst. He caught her around the throat. There was no invisible grasp this time. He had her in is very real, very dangerous hand. He lifted her easily over his head. Other quintessentialists had appeared from either side of the street, converging on her captor. Tia wanted to shout at them to kill them both, but she couldn’t do more than croak.
Its eyes locked on hers, the blue fire searing into her soul. When it spoke, its harsh rendition of the common tongue sent chills up her spine. “I am Zarfensis, High Priest of the Xarundi, Chosen of the Shadow Assembly, and I will see you dead, Swordmage. I swear it.”
Zarfensis threw her into the wall that Wynn had been backed against and her head rocked back. Just before she passed out, she saw the Xarundi close the distance to the quintessentialists in two astounding leaps. He slammed into the tight-knit group, tossing them aside like so many rag dolls. The monstrous beast disappeared into the darkness.
Wynn lay a few feet away, the left side of his face a ruin of blood and torn flesh. Tia’s stomach churned when she saw that his eye was gone. She coughed and tasted copper on her tongue. Her chest hurt so badly and fighting for breath was becoming harder.
Tia tried to call for help but couldn’t make the words come. Lying there in the street, her outstretched fingers nearly touching Wynn’s, she slipped into blackness.
Chapter Seven
Outside Ethergate, the eleven remaining Xarundi gathered in the gathering light of day. Chrin’s maw was a mass of blood and gore. Most of his nose was gone, bare cartilage exposed by the flashing blade of the Swordmage’s scimitar.
Zarfensis struggled with his metal leg. The gnome had told him that it would need to be recharged periodically with runedust. The High Priest had fished about in his belt pouch only to find that the vial of dust that he had been carrying for that purpose had been shattered during the fighting. He pried the chamber open and poured as much of the dust as he could scrape out of the pouch into the leg. It helped some, but the journey back to the Warrens would be a slow one.
“That’s twice,” Chrin snarled. “That the vermin have bested us, High Priest.”
“I don’t know that they bested us, Chrin. We lost four of our brothers, but we killed scores of vermin, including their magic users, and we gained a valuable ally. The gargoyle gave us the means to summon him at our will and will be uniquely suited to providing information we cannot hope to obtain elsewhere.”
The warrior glared at him, saying nothing.
“I know it goes against our nature to flee from vermin,” Zarfensis said. “All I ask is that you trust me a little longer. Wars aren’t always won with the first battle.”
Chrin thought about that for a moment and then nodded slowly. He turned and began trudging through the predawn light, the warriors falling into formation behind him. They’d find somewhere safe to sleep the day away and start mending their wounds. Then they would return to the Warrens and plan their next attack. The Swordmage would fall. Zarfensis would see to that personally.
* * *
The infirmary, normally ample space for the sick or wounded of Ethergate, was crammed full to bursting. Normally there were beds for half a dozen patients, spread out from each other so that the healers and clerics could do their work. The surprise attack on the city had left them with five times that many injured and so many dead that the city guard had moved some of the bodies into an unused storeroom across from the brokerage. Someone had proposed a mass grave, but was met with such vocal resistance that the idea had been summarily dismissed.
Dawn had brought with it the full reality of the night’s horrors. In the cold light of day, there were many reminders of how narrowly they had survived. Buildings were damaged or in some cases, burned out hulks. Crimson stained the streets and in many places the heavy stench of blood and offal still hung on the air. The guards had gone from door to door, as much to catalog any wounded or dead as to assure themselves that no Xarundi, living or dead, remained in the city. The four monsters they had killed had been dragged outside the city walls and set to burn. Many had gathered to witness the disposal, looking on in grim silence.
Wynn looked out the window near Tia’s bed. A pair of healers carrying a litter dashed by. Curls of lazy smoke climbed into the sky from within the city and without. He wondered how long it would take them all to recover. He looked down at Tiadaria. She might have been sleeping, except that the healers had said she took a nasty blow to the head. That had happened after he had been knocked out. There was hushed talk that she might never wake, but he refused to believe such nonsense. She was strong, a fierce warrior. Unlike the coward he was. Tia had to wake, he thought savagely. They needed her. He needed her.
The air in the infirmary was thick with the smell of antiseptic spirits. It reminded him of the hall in Blackbeach where they had taken the bodies of the boys he had killed. Wynn had vowed never to enter such a place again. Yet here he was, keeping an uneasy vigil over the woman who had saved his life. It seemed the least he could do. After all, it was his fault that she was in the bed in the first place.
No matter how many times he revisited the previous night’s events in his head, he couldn’t come up with a single way in which he had done anything but get her hurt. To be fair, Tia hadn’t fully conveyed the mind-numbing horror of being face-to-face with a real, live Xarundi. To hear about the beasts was one thing. To watch in helpless terror as it tore apart every living thing in its path was another matter altogether.
Still, she had asked him to fight, and instead, he had frozen in place, too terrified to do more than huddle against the wall and hope that the entire ordeal would be over soon. If only he had fought, maybe his face wouldn’t hurt so much, maybe he’d still have his eye, and maybe the girl laying in the bed next to him could not have only saved herself, but others in the city who had needed her help as well.
The side of his face throbbed like a distant drumbeat. He tentatively touched the bandages there. His fingers came away sticky, stained with blood that had seeped through the gauze. The healers had offered him medicine for the pain, but he had politely, if firmly, refused. The pain was a good reminder that the next time Tia asked him to fight, maybe he should do it.
There was a commotion at the end of the long hall and Wynn turned his body so he could see clearly with his remaining eye. The clerics had just drawn a bloodstained sheet over the face of someone laying on the table. A woman, a commoner judging by her plain linen dress, threw herself over the body, her wails echoing across the infirmary. How many more would die, Wynn wondered bitterly.
Even as small as he felt, there was something inside him that was even worse. It was the insistent little voice that asked what if? What if Tiadaria had never come to Ethergate? What if the Xarundi hadn’t come looking for her? It wasn’t as if the city hadn’t fought off its fair share of attacks in the past, but never had the cost been so high. The rational part of him knew she wasn’t really to blame, but the rational side of him hadn’t done him much good lately.