The Demon Awakens (DemonWars), page 97
The giant roared in pain and could not finish the attack, and so Nightbird and his horse rushed past and seemed to break clear.
But then yet another giant stepped out to block the path, and the trail was narrower up ahead, giving the ranger nowhere to run. He dropped Tempest across his lap and went back to Hawkwing, fitting an arrow and leveling the bow in the blink of an eye.
He would only get one shot.
He had to be perfect.
The arrow, fired from barely fifteen feet away, got the giant right in the eye, and how it howled! It clutched at its face and spun halfway about, shrieking and screaming.
“Run on!” Nightbird commanded the horse. Out flashed Tempest; the ranger tightened his legs about the powerful stallion, and Symphony, understanding Nightbird’s commands, understanding the desperation of the situation, willingly obliged and never slowed, hitting the behemoth in full gallop.
The ranger got a strike in at the same moment, his sword slashing hard at the side of the tumbling giant’s neck. Down the brute went, and Symphony, stunned, held his balance, Nightbird tugging hard to turn the horse about as the other two came in.
“Keep this one out of the fight,” the ranger bade Symphony, and then he tossed his sword to the ground and took up his bow, diving into a roll from the horse’s back, fitting an arrow as he went and letting fly as he came rolling around back to his feet. The missile drove deep into a giant shoulder, but the behemoth seemed hardly to notice it.
The ranger conjured images of the poor prisoners on the other side of the town, men being roasted alive on the powrie bonfires, and from those scenes he drew rage, and from his rage he drew strength. He reached out for Tempest, and the magical blade, hearing his silent call, flew to his hand and flared with inner power. Nightbird, too focused to even notice the spectacle of his sword, charged straight ahead.
His attack surprised the giants, enough for the ranger to slide in on one knee, ducking beneath the sidelong swipe of one brute. Out flashed his sword, smacking off the behemoth’s kneecap, and as the creature instinctively lifted its leg to grab at the wound, the ranger ran forward, right under the upraised heavy boot, diving past the other leg, out of reach of the second behemoth as it came around the first for a swing.
Nightbird pivoted and struck once and then again, scoring two stabbing hits on the giant’s buttocks. The brute spun and swung wildly, holding its club in one hand, its free hand alternately holding its arrow-stuck shoulder, its slashed knee, its stabbed butt.
The club came nowhere near to hitting the nimble ranger. He dropped into a squatting position, letting it soar over his head, then came up hard, chasing the hand, striking out and hitting again, right on the giant’s wrist.
The behemoth howled; the club went flying free.
But the move had put Nightbird in a sorry position with the second giant, and he could not completely avoid the brute’s swinging club. It clipped him on the shoulder and sent him flying, tumbling right over in the air, coming down headfirst and tumbling again, and then again after that as he hit the ground in a desperate attempt to absorb some of the shock.
He came around in a roll, studying his foe. Truly this was the ugliest giant he had ever seen, with one lip torn away and a garish tattoo of a goblin ripped in half covering its forehead. One ear was also missing and the other sported a large gold earcap. Grinning wickedly, the brute looked to its stung companion, nodding as the behemoth indicated that it was still ready for the fight. The ugly brute slowly stalked in.
Even for the elven-trained ranger, two giants were more than a match.
But at least it would remain only two, Nightbird noted, glancing at Symphony. The giant on the ground was trying to rise, but the horse reared repeatedly over its head, front hooves pounding away.
The giant, blind in one eye, reached out desperately, then tried to rise again as Symphony spun about.
The horse was only lining the brute up for a kick, though, and the giant wasn’t halfway to standing when Symphony lashed out with both rear legs, connecting solidly on the giant’s face and laying it out straight.
Then the horse came right over the head again, front legs tapping a steady beat.
Nightbird didn’t see the last move, too concerned with scrambling away from the closest giant’s sudden rain of blows, overhand chops that could not be ducked. The ground shook with each tremendous impact.
The other giant retrieved its club, but seemed in no hurry to join its companion.
Still, Nightbird heard the pursuit closing from all around and knew he was running out of time.
Pony had not been idle. After her lightning blast rocked the barricade, clearing the way for Elbryan and then Juraviel—and then, though she hadn’t known it, for Roger Lockless—the woman ran down the slope, angling to the north. She tried to keep track of the ranger’s movements within the town, following the sound of shouting monsters and the ringing silverel as Tempest did its work, and she was fairly certain that her love was also making his way around the northern edge.
Pony’s run became a series of short bursts, moving from cover to cover, looking back toward the town, trying to gain some information. She saw the heads of two giants, saw one lurch suddenly and cry out in pain, and knew that Nightbird had come upon them. When a third giant’s head and shoulders appeared, towering above the low buildings, Pony realized that her love was in serious trouble.
The woman fumbled about in her pouch of stones, trying to find one that might help. The ruby was no good, for she hadn’t the time to go to Elbryan’s side. She might use the graphite to skim a lightning bolt off the rooftops, but that, she feared, might also sting her love, especially if he was in close battle.
“Malachite,” the woman decided, pulling forth the green, ringed stone. She would levitate one of the brutes, float him up high into the air, and make the odds a bit more even.
As she pulled out the stone, though, she saw another, the lodestone, and thought it even more clever.
Pony lifted her hand and took aim, focusing her vision through the magic of the gem, seeking out a metallic target at which she could launch her missile.
But there seemed to be nothing; the giants wore no armor and were wielding wooden clubs!
Pony growled and looked deeper, and still found nothing. She was about to change back to the malachite—her heart soared when she saw another giant go down—when at last she found a slight pull coming from the side of the remaining giant’s head, from the area near its ear.
Nightbird leaped ahead and to the side, avoiding yet another downward smash. Out flashed Tempest, a sudden lunge, but the giant was already turning its huge body, moving limbs and torso safely out of reach.
This one was skilled, the ranger realized. He gave a nervous glance to the side, to see the other giant watching.
Then he and the ugly brute went through a second round of attack and counter, again with no decisive winner, though this time Nightbird did score a minor hit. Still, the giant only howled—with laughter and not with pain—and its companion seemed even more bolstered and ready to join.
“Argh, get ye in here!” the ugly behemoth bellowed, but the words ended abruptly as the giant’s head suddenly snapped to the side. The monster’s head came back up straight, but its eyes were no longer seeing the ranger, were suddenly veiled in darkness. Without a movement to brace its fall, the giant dropped face first into the dirt.
The earcap was missing, Nightbird noted. No, not missing, but pushed in, driven right through the giant’s skull and into its brain!
Not missing a beat, the ranger spun on the last giant and roared in victory, and the fomorian fell all over itself, burying a powrie that came around the corner as it tried to get away.
The ranger understood this mystery quite clearly. He said a little thank-you to Pony, whom he knew to be the source, then split the giant’s skull in half with Tempest and pulled the magnetite from the gore.
“Symphony!” he cried, and ran to retrieve his bow.
The great horse whinnied and spun, pausing only to launch another double kick into the prone giant’s face. Symphony came by Nightbird in a canter and the ranger leaped up and pulled himself into his saddle, sliding Tempest under his thigh and putting Hawkwing to the ready in one fluid movement
He shot the powrie the giant had trampled as it stubbornly tried to regain its footing, then ran over the unfortunate dwarf with Symphony for good measure, breaking into the clear behind it, then turning fast down another alley, and the chase was on once more.
Unlike the ranger, Roger Lockless was doing all he could to avoid drawing attention to himself. The nimble thief worked his way carefully from rooftop to rooftop when the buildings were close enough, or down the side of one structure and up the side of another when they were not. Twice he found himself unintentionally on the same roof as an enemy, but both times he kept calm and as quiet as a shadow and moved along without being noticed, for that enemy, be it goblin or powrie, was inevitably distracted by the tumult of the ranger’s passing.
The bonfire guided Roger, leading him unerringly across Caer Tinella until he was perched on a roof no more than twenty feet from the ragged prisoners, a score and a half of them, sitting on the ground, in deep despair, chained together at the ankles. Many monsters were about, and two in particular, a huge giant, the largest Roger had ever seen, and a nervous Kos-kosio Begulne, caught his attention—and, it seemed, caught the attention of all the other monsters in the area.
“Doomed we are!” the powrie wailed. “Nightbird’s come and all the world’s a cursed place!”
The giant shook its huge head and calmly bade the powrie to be quiet “Are you not the one who wanted to bring him in?”
“Ye’re not knowing!” the powrie snapped back “Ye wasn’t there, in the middle o’ the fight, when he killed us in the valley.”
“I wish he had,” the giant said dryly. That gave Roger pause. A giant with wit? The mere thought of it sent a shudder down his spine; a giant’s only weakness was often between its ears.
With a shrug, the young man slipped down the back side of the building, shadowed from the light of the fire, then tiptoed into the line of human prisoners, slipping to a seat right between a pair of very surprised and very beleaguered men. They did well to keep quiet, and Roger, lockpick in hand, went right to work on the shackles.
“Doomed, says I!” the powrie wailed. “Both of us!”
“You’re half right,” the giant said quietly. With a sudden move, Maiyer Dek lifted Kos-kosio into the air and tossed the thrashing powrie onto the burning pyre. The dwarf wailed and scrambled out of the flames, but they stubbornly followed, grabbing at clothes, at hair, eating flesh; even the magical bracers the dwarf had taken from fallen Ulg Tik’narn could not save Kos-kosio Begulne from a horrible death.
All the monstrous gathering was in tumult then, some screaming for the death of the prisoners, others—powries all—for a revolt against the giant.
And in the middle of it all Roger Lockless calmly went about his work, shifting down the line, one man at a time, opening shackles and bidding the men to stay calm until all were free.
“Hear me!” Maiyer Dek roared, and it was impossible for any within a hundred yards to not hear the booming, resonant voice. “This is only one human, one puny human. A hundred pieces of King’s gold and ten prisoners to the one that brings me the head of Nightbird!”
That put the monsters in line, had them leaping and crying out excitedly, had many of them running off to find the fighting.
For just a split second Roger Lockless entertained the thought of those monsters catching and killing Elbryan. With a low growl the young man quickly berated himself for even thinking such things, and silently thanked the ranger for again allowing him the distraction he needed to finish his work here. And while he opened the next shackle, Roger Lockless prayed for Elbryan’s safe escape.
“I am with you, Nightbird,” came a most-welcome voice above the ranger as he turned tight about a building, monsters in close pursuit He heard the twang of an elvish bow, and then the flutter of wings, and a moment later Belli’mar Juraviel was on Symphony behind him, bow in hand.
“You shoot those in front, I will cover flanks and rear,” the elf offered, letting fly another arrow even as he made the statement. His bolt hit the mark, scoring solidly on a giant’s face, but the behemoth only roared and brushed the insignificant hit away. “Though I fear I’ll run out of arrows in an attempt to kill even one giant!” Juraviel added.
It didn’t matter too much, anyway, for none of the monsters behind would get near the fast-running Symphony. Head down, nostrils puffing, the stallion tore up the ground, and the ranger, telepathically linked to the horse through the turquoise, did not need his hands to guide him. Those monsters who came out in front, or at an angle where they might intercept, met with the thunder of Nightbird’s magnificent bow and the pounding of Symphony’s hooves, and the companions ran on, soon turning into the lane that ran the extent of Caer Tinella’s western side, just inside the barricade.
Symphony, and the ranger wholeheartedly agreed, skidded to an abrupt stop.
“We cannot get to them,” Juraviel said, looking past the ranger to the bonfire, and to the dozens of monsters swarming all about the path ahead of them.
Nightbird growled and moved to kick the horse’s flanks.
“No!” Juraviel scolded. “Your run was magnificent and brave, but to go on is purely foolish. And what hope will be left those men if they see Nightbird cut down before them? Over the wall with us, I say! It is the only way!”
Nightbird studied the scene before him, heard the monsters closing from behind and from the east. He could not disagree, and so he grabbed the reins hard and jerked the horse’s head to the west, toward the barricade and the open night beyond.
Out in that darkness, only a few feet from the wall, Pony stood perplexed, desperately trying to find some way to improvise. She didn’t know exactly where the ranger was, though she was fairly sure he had come to this edge of town, and didn’t have the time to use the quartz or the hematite to try and find out. Thus, she could not risk a bolt of lightning or any other substantial magical attack.
But this?
In her hand she held a diamond, the source of light and of warmth. There was a delicate balance in this gemstone’s magic, Pony understood, for within its depths light and dark were not absolutes, but were, rather, gradations of each other. Thus a diamond could bring forth a brilliant shine or a quiet glow. But what might happen, Pony wondered, if she tilted the balance in the other direction?
“This is a wonderful time for experiments,” she whispered sarcastically, but even as she finished the thought, she was falling into the magic of the stone, finding that balance, picturing it as a circular plate perched atop the tip of a knitting needle. If she turned the closest edge of that plate up, she would bring forth light.
She turned it down instead.
The great fire dimmed; all the torches seemed to flicker and lessen, until they were no more than tiny pinpricks of light. At first Nightbird thought a gust of wind must have swept through—just over his head, he guessed, since he had felt no breeze. It made no sense, though, for what wind might so easily defeat so large a fire as the burning pyre?
Then it was dark, just dark, and Symphony, heading still for the western wall, hesitated, unable to see the barricade to make the leap.
“Jilseponie with the stones,” Juraviel reasoned, though the elf feared differently, feared that this darkness might be the trademark of the demon dactyl. Juraviel had met the beast once before, soon after he had left the ranger’s expedition to take some refugees to the safety of Andur’Blough Inninness, and on that occasion the dactyl had been surrounded by a cloud of darkness. Not quite like this one, though; the blackness of the dactyl was more a wave of despair over the heart than a lack of light to the eyes.
“They are blinded,” Nightbird replied, noting the frantic movements of the monsters along the lane. They could no longer see him, he realized, could no longer see the ground at their feet or the walls before them.
“As am I,” Juraviel was quick to answer, and that gave the ranger pause. He had thought, or hoped, that Pony had indeed enacted some enchantment to blind his enemies, but why, then, was Juraviel affected, and why was he still able to see?
“The cat’s-eye,” he reasoned, feeling the gem-set circlet about his head. That had to be the answer, but whatever the case, Nightbird was not going to let this turn of fate go to waste. He communicated with his horse, bade Symphony to turn back down the lane, back toward the fire and the prisoners, and then he guided the stallion with the turquoise, as he had so often done before, letting Symphony “see” through his eyes.
“Hold on tightly,” Nightbird bade the elf, and Juraviel was willing to comply, since he could not put his bow to use anyway.
Down the path they charged, Nightbird working hard to keep Symphony veering around scrambling goblins and powries, and to keep far away from the two giants that were feeling about one of the buildings. They came out of the enchanted area of darkness suddenly, without warning, right before the bonfire. Most of the monstrous host was behind them, but gigantic Maiyer Dek was not, the behemoth standing near the fire, waving a huge sword easily in one hand.
Nightbird managed to look past the giant, to see Roger among the far end of the prisoner line, working furiously on some shackles.
“I have waited too long for this,” the giant said quietly.
“As have I,” the ranger answered grimly, needing the bravado to hold this one’s attention, and the gazes of all those nearby.
“As have I!” came a cry behind the ranger, and Juraviel leaned out to the side and let fly an arrow for Maiyer Dek’s face.
