by Jim Butcher
It worked better when one wasn't wearing all the armor, Tavi thought, but at least the turf of the lawn was soft enough to absorb some of the impact. It knocked some of the wind from him, but he forced himself to his feet, drew his sword, and rushed to Varg's side, just as the gargoyles regained their feet.
He never hesitated or slowed his steps, but once more reached into the steel of his blade, aligning its substance with his will. He let out a howl as he closed on the nearer of the two gargoyles from its flank, and swung his blade low. A shower of scarlet-and-azure sparks flared where the blade contacted the stone surface of the gargoyle, and the steel of the gladius sliced through the granite as if it had been moldy cheese. The blow carried so much force as it passed through the gargoyle's leg that it spun Tavi completely around from one step to the next- in time for him to repeat the same movement, upon the second leg, to another shower of angry light and a scream of tortured stone.
The gargoyle toppled onto its side, arms thrashing-but Tavi had severed its original contact with the earth completely, and the gargoyle began to crumble, beginning at the stumps of its severed thighs, as if bleeding gravel.
The gargoyle's companion evidently recognized the danger Tavi represented and switched its attention from Varg to the young man. Before Tavi had recovered from his assault, the second gargoyle bellowed, a sound like a small earthquake, dropped to all fours, and charged.
Tavi knew that if he waited for the fury to charge, it would crush him to pulp through sheer momentum, and in desperation he reached out for his wind-crafting, and the world around him slowed to crystalline clarity, his own movements becoming dreamy and dancelike. Off-balance as he was, he saw that he had no chance of avoiding the gargoyle's rush completely, so instead he simply focused on minimizing the impact. He leapt to one side, body stretching out, arms ahead of him as he spun in midair.
The gargoyle struck him across both calves while his body was parallel to the earth. The force of the collision flung Tavi's legs forward and sent him into a spin. The impact hurt tremendously, and the slowed perceptions of his wind-crafting gave him plenty of subjective time in which to experience it, fracturing his concentration. The world rushed back into its normal pace, and he hit the ground hard, landing on his belly. His left ankle burned viciously, and he was certain that he'd just sprained it at the very least. He drew on the steel of his blade, and the pain receded from his perceptions-not so much vanishing as becoming irrelevant, its significance forgotten.
The gargoyle turned in a broad arch, its furiously laboring limbs churning up a swath of the lawn, and attacked again. Tavi was on his feet by the time the gargoyle reached him, and, at the last second, he danced a step to one side, his sword striking cleanly through a section of the gargoyle's misshapen shoulder. Once he'd found the opening, he pressed his advantage, and while the gargoyle tried to turn on him again, Tavi pursued it, staying in close to its flank, so that it could never quite reach him.
The only drawback to the tactic was that he had to keep moving, and he never got the chance to plant his feet and deliver the kind of solidly grounded blow he would need to finish the stone fury, but he hacked it about the head and shoulders again and again with his short blade, carving wedge-shaped chunks from the gargoyle's body. Then his injured foot wobbled very oddly and refused to support him. He fell to one knee, and the gargoyle turned on him.
Without room to build up momentum, the gargoyle's pure mass was less of a threat as it slammed into him, but its strength was prodigious. Tavi stepped under a swiping limb and threw his armored shoulder into the gargoyle's chest, screaming, instinctively drawing up power from the ground beneath his legs. The earthcrafted strength surged through him-
– and stopped the gargoyle in its tracks.
Tavi let out a roar of excitement and drove forward against the earth fury, shoving with every ounce of strength he could muster. He drove it back an inch, and then six, and then suddenly the earth fury was reeling back, overborne, to fall upon its back.
Tavi's sword swept up, and he brought it down in a heavy stroke aimed for an indentation in the gargoyle's chest, a point which he somehow knew would be vulnerable.
The sword struck in another shower of sparks, and the gargoyle's torso cracked and split, then shattered into a dozen pieces with a sound like a thunderclap. The sheer force of it threw the pieces apart from one another, where they began to crumble away, some of them still twitching with the fury's presence.
"Varg!" Tavi shouted. "Get up!" His knowledge of the Cane's tongue was hardly exhaustive, but he could say that much in it. "Varg! Narsh raulg, crows take you!"
He went to the Cane's side, jealous of every second, and looked at the Cane. Varg's leg was bleeding most, where he'd taken that spear, but it didn't look like it had struck an artery. There was dust from the shattered stone covering his black fur, and there was a small army of gashes and incidental cuts on every part of his body Tavi could see. He didn't know Canim physiology well enough to tell for sure, but Varg's rib cage looked misshapen, and one of his arms was certainly broken.
Tavi ground his teeth and realized that the only reason he could see well enough to take stock of Varg's injuries was that the firehounds had come closer.
There were a dozen of them. Tavi had read the reports of the crafters who had prepared them, and he knew something about them. They had been created to behave according to instincts similar to those of wolves in the wild-to pursue those who ran, on the theory that they would be used to surround anyone attempting to leave the building in a wall of searing heat.
Just as they were doing to Tavi and Varg now.
They couldn't run. If they did, the firehounds would pursue them, growing more agitated and burning hotter. They couldn't stay, either. It would not take long for the Grey Guard to arrive, call the Tower's furies to heel, and clap them all in irons. Tavi looked up at the aqueduct overhead. He could escape that way, if it came to that, but with the heavy rope broken, they had nothing that could haul Varg up and out of reach of the firehounds. Besides, his injuries seemed to be too severe to risk anything so strenuous as tying a rope around him and swinging him through the air.
He had to find another way out. How?
The firehounds trotted in a circle around them, only twenty or thirty feet away, and the grass beneath their feet blackened to ash as they passed over it. The air grew hotter. Tavi raised a hand to shield his face from the heat radiating from the nearest firehound, but it did him little good.
Varg jerked his head once, snapped his jaws, then his bloodred eyes opened. He let out a heavy, rough-sounding snarl, then moved, his body tight with pain, pushing himself to a hunched, labored crouch.
One of the nearest firehounds suddenly rushed in closer, toward Varg, perhaps driven by a predatory instinct to assault the weak and injured first.
Tavi ripped off his soaking-wet cloak and stepped into its way. He swung the cloth at the firehound and it slapped hard against it. A cloud of steam boiled forth from the impact, and the fire fury let out a crackling cry of pain, retreating back to the circling members of the pack. Tavi glanced at his cloak and grimaced. Even the brief touch against the fire fury's surface had burned and charred the cloak, despite the water it had absorbed.
Water. The aqueduct.
Tavi looked up, excited. Surely, there was water enough flowing through its trough to extinguish the firehounds, or at least to send them scurrying away. But he glanced at his own left hand and saw red blisters rising from the scorched skin of his knuckles, where the steam from the impact had billowed back over his hand. With his pain restrained by Tavi's metalcrafting, he hadn't felt the burn his hand had received, but when he flexed his fingers he found them somewhat stiff and reluctant to move. A bad burn.
No good. Even if he could somehow bring the water down on the hounds, the resulting fog bank of steam would broil Tavi and Varg alive. If he couldn't use water, somehow, then how could he-
"Kitai!" he shouted, looking desperately up at the
aqueduct. "Kitai! Throw me the backup coldstone and your sword!"
Within seconds, Kitai's gladius tumbled down, and its point struck deep into the lawn. Tied to its hilt by its drawstring was one of the heavy, insulated leather bags.
"Good!" Tavi shouted. "Go to Ehren! I'll meet you there!"
"Aleran," Varg growled. He coughed, and it sounded wet. "I am your enemy. If you die to protect me, I will lose respect for you."
"I'm not going to die," Tavi snarled. "And neither are you. "
Cripple and possibly maim himself, certainly, Tavi thought. But that was better than dying-and at least he wouldn't have to feel it happening. He placed Kitai's sword flat on the ground, opened the pouch, and took the cold-stone from it. It burned his fingers whenit touched them. Tavi gingerly placed the coldstone on the flat of Kitai's sword, at its base, just above the hilt.
Tavi grabbed the handle of Kitai's sword, gritted his teeth, and tightened his grip on his own blade. Then, with a single, swift motion, he lifted his sword and brought its flat down hard on the coldstone, shattering it between the metal blades.
The fire fury trapped within the stone exploded out from it, greedily devouring the warmth of everything around it. The air flashed several degrees cooler-but it was the steel of the blades that could most readily house the hideous, aching cold within the fury-bound stone.
The swords screamed, a piercing shriek of metallic protest as the cold invaded them. Frost formed on the bright steel surfaces in an instant, and almost immediately, the length of each blade was sheathed in a layer of thick white mist. Tavi felt the cold in his hands, a distant surge of fire that vanished an instant later. Frost formed on his fingernails, and the skin on his hand flushed bright red.
Tavi straightened, nodded at Varg, and said, "Come on."
Then he turned toward the nearest wall and charged the firehounds who stood in their way.
The furies' reaction was immediate. They surged toward Tavi and Varg, their fiery auras flaring in excitement.
Tavi lifted his mist-shrouded blades as the first firehound leapt at him. He juked to one side, careful not to depend wholly upon his wounded foot to support his weight, this time. He slashed at the firehound with one of his frozen swords, and the blade struck the fury's canine skull just above its eyes, shearing the top of its head away. A jet of furious fire emerged in a torrent. The fury let out a crackling scream and thrashed wildly as if in tremendous pain, and the flame rushing from the wound set the lawn beneath it ablaze.
Tavi never slowed. The next firehound rushed in low and Tavi dropped to one knee in a low thrust, skewering the fury on one blade and halting its forward momentum. A sharp, sizzling sound filled the air, and the firehound thrashed wildly. It heaved itself off the blade, and when Tavi rose to menace it again, it cringed away from him.
Tavi went on by, and had to leap over a blazing swath of lawn. He glanced back at Varg, but the big Cane did not bother to leap the fire. He simply loped through it, snarling. The scent of singed fur filled the air.
More of the firehounds followed them, and Tavi dropped back behind Varg. One more got close enough for Tavi to strike, driving it back. Tavi couldn't feel the cold of the swords through his numbed hands, but the mist clinging to the blades was not as thick as it had been. To make matters worse, he could see the front doors to the Tower from where he stood, and the Grey Guard was even now attempting to lift the portcullis that had fallen to close the front door.
Tavi kept on backpedaling, calling to Varg, "We've got to get over the wall!"
Suddenly his arms were seized by large and inhumanly powerful hands. Before he could react, he heard Varg grunt with effort, and then he was flying through the air. He had a split second to realize that the top of the fifteen-foot wall was in front of him, and he hooked an arm over the lip before he could fall again. The stony blades atop the wall cut into his arm in a dozen places. As they did, one of the owl-guardians turned its stony head toward him and let out an ear-piercing shriek, which he felt certain would leave him with a lasting headache.
Provided, of course, that he lasted.
He dropped the swords in order to get a better hold of the top of the wall- or tried to. He found, to his surprise, that his numb hands would not release their grip on the blades, no matter how hard he tried to do so.
He gritted his teeth, struggling to reach through the stone of the wall to the earth below, to summon up strength enough to haul his body over the top of the wall, but as he did, his concentration on holding his body's pains away began to falter, and flashes of agony shot through him in a dozen places, like jets of water shooting through the cracks of a failing dam.
Tavi stopped trying to call up strength, took the weapon in his right hand, and with a single, focused stroke, drove it six inches into the stone of the wall, blade parallel to the earth. Then he grunted and lifted his right leg, planting his boot on the flat of the sword. Using it as a solid base for leverage, he twisted his shoulders and hauled his right hand from the frozen blade's hilt. Flesh tore. He bled, but freed of the blade, he was able to use his improvised foothold and roll himself over the top of the wall and off the other side, gathering up more cuts and slashes on his legs, though his armor protected his chest and back from further damage.
The fifteen-foot drop was a bad one, and he landed hard, knocking the wind from him and sending a spear of silver pain lancing along his neck and down through his spine.
Varg's shaggy form appeared atop the wall, and snarls bubbled from his throat as he, too, was wounded. He seized the wall's top with one clawed paw-hand and lowered himself in a more controlled fashion, dropping the last few feet without effort.
All the while, the stupid owl never stopped shrieking. Tavi wearily pushed himself upright. His body was not moving correctly, and though he could not tell precisely why, it stood to reason that he had been injured in the fall. After that first flash of pain, the steely resolve of his mind had asserted control over it, and he couldn't feel any pain now-but the lack of free motion did not seem to be a positive sign.
Varg staggered, crouched again, and had to use one arm to hold himself upright. Tavi could see the Cane's blood dripping on the cobblestones of the street.
Tavi heard men's voices crying out now. They had freed themselves of the tower and would be on the street next.
"Now what?" Varg growled, panting.
"This way," Tavi said, turning away from the direction of the Tower's gate. He tried to set out at a brisk jog, but his muscles didn't seem to cooperate. The best he could do was a hasty shamble-which was probably just as well. Varg looked to be in terrible condition himself. They had not gone far when there was a shout behind them.
Tavi turned and saw thirty or forty Guardsmen, most of them in armor now, round the corner and race toward them.
Hoofbeats sounded from the cross street ahead, and a wagon being pulled by a team of four rounded the corner, rising up onto two wheels for a second as it did. Ehren held the horses' reins, and Kitai sat beside him on the driver's bench.
"There!" Tavi said, pointing. "Come on."
He limped hurriedly toward the wagon, and Ehren waited until the last minute to haul the team to a stop. The horses reared and kicked as they caught Varg's scent. Tavi led Varg in a circle around them and found his mother and Araris in the back of the wagon. Isana looked quite pale, and a bloodied cloth was around her upper arm, but her eyes were open, and she seemed alert. She took one look at the blood all over his legs and his arms, and her eyes widened in alarm. "Tavi!"
"In," Tavi shouted to Varg.
The shouts and boot-steps of the Grey Guard grew louder.
"Hurry!" Ehren said.
Varg's strength seemed to ebb suddenly, just as he began to climb into the wagon. Tavi got behind him, screaming sulfurous curses and pushing at the veritable mountain of muscle and fur. Araris seized one of Varg's arms and pulled. Somehow, they managed to get the Cane into the wagon.
Kitai stood up on the driver's bench, holdi
ng a thick sack in one hand. "Aleran!"
Tavi struggled for a second, but with Araris's assistance managed to clamber into the back of the wagon. "Go, go, go!"
The street was too narrow to turn the wagon. Tavi saw that immediately. But when Ehren shook the reins and called for the nervous horses to run, Tavi let out a cry of protest. The wagon would never make it through the group of Knights Ferrous. The blades of the Grey Guard would cut the wagon to kindling as they tried to pass through their ranks.
Kitai reached into the large insulated sack that had been left with the wagon and drew out another coldstone. She lifted it and threw it hard at the side of the nearest building, where it shattered, releasing the fire fury within.
There was a flash of blue as the cold spread into the air-and into the public furylamps that hung at the same level, where it devoured their flame, jumping hungrily from one to the next for a hundred feet in either direction. The street plunged into blackness.
"Yahh!" Ehren screamed to the horses. The beasts charged forward, reckless and terrified-which was, Tavi thought, probably a fair description for what the Grey Guard had to be feeling at the moment. He felt exactly the same way. Men cried out around them, and hooves rang on cobblestones, wheels rumbling as the wagon bounced wildly. There were a couple of cries of pain, then they emerged from the darkness and into another furylit area.
Kitai flung another stone, and once again they were in darkness. It would, Tavi had hoped, hinder any pursuit, slowing the reactions of the authorities- and it was working. At least something in the plan had gone right tonight.
After five or six minutes of noisy flight, Ehren slowed the wagon and continued on for several more blocks, changing streets several times, while Araris covered Varg with a canvas tarp. Isana, meanwhile, bound up Tavi's right hand and examined the rest of his injuries with worried eyes.