Whisper of Venom: Brotherhood of the Griffon, Book II

by Richard Lee Byers

  But occasionally one of the paths that ran up, down, or across emerged into the open air. Maybe it was to allay the strange fear of enclosed spaces that afflicted people who weren’t dwarves. At any rate it was pleasant to interrupt the long climb to the apartments of Clan Daardendrien on the strip of walkway, more or less a balcony itself. Since Khouryn was alone, no one else would guess that he was feeling the weight of his mail, or that his arse and thighs ached. It seemed to him that if a fellow could ride a griffon all day without distress, then he ought to manage just as well on a horse, but it apparently didn’t work that way.

  The granite balustrade came up to his chin, but the view was pleasant nonetheless. The ambient light had dimmed to mimic the night outside. Even high up the air smelled pleasantly of greenery, perhaps because so many dragonborn grew potted plants on their terraces. Lamps and candles glowed, and he made out the silhouettes of a household sitting down to a late supper. His belly growled, reminding him that he was as hungry as he was tired.

  He supposed that meant he should resume the tramp upward and find out what his hosts’ cook had prepared for the evening meal. As he turned away from the balustrade, he caught a pattering sound nearly inaudible amid the constant echoing murmur of the indoor city. Something that he couldn’t see was rushing him.

  He leaped to the side. His phantom assailant slammed into the balustrade. A portion of the railing came away from the rest and toppled into space. If Khouryn hadn’t dodged, he would have fallen right along with it.

  He hoped that, carried along by its own momentum and neatly caught in its own snare, his attacker would plummet. But as it seethed into visibility, the dark, scaly thing flapped its batlike wings, and the action held it poised on the brink of the drop. Red eyes glaring from its horned head, serpentine tail lashing, it pivoted while the piece of detached balustrade crashed to the floor far below.

  The thing looked like some sort of devil, which meant it might have all manner of strange abilities. Khouryn judged that the sensible thing to do was kill it before it could demonstrate any more of them. He snatched for the urgrosh strapped to his back.

  He’d just gotten the spiked axe into his hands when, its upper body jerking forward, the devil spat at him. Black fumes streamed from the fanged mouth in its bearded, satyrlike face.

  The way the murky cloud expanded made it impossible to dodge. Khouryn bowed his head and raised his arms to protect his face.

  The fumes seared him wherever they touched his skin. But his steel and leather trappings took the worst of it. Though his eyes stung and filled with tears, he could still make out the creature when it sprang. And still swing the urgrosh despite the pain.

  The axe bit into the devil’s torso. The stroke would have killed a dwarf or human, but the creature grabbed Khouryn by the arms. Its tail whipped around both their bodies to lash him across the back. His mail clashed. The tail whirled back into view, presumably for another stroke, and he saw the jagged stinger at the end of it.

  He heaved, broke the grips on his arms, and chopped at the tail. The urgrosh cut it in two, and the devil screeched. Dissolving like breath on a windowpane, it backpedaled toward the gap in the balustrade.

  Khouryn raced after it and got back inside striking range before it could become entirely invisible or retreat where wingless opponents couldn’t go. He swung. The axe cut deep, smashing through ribs to cleave the organs beneath. The devil’s legs buckled, and it fell. Its shuddering form became opaque once more.

  When the twitching subsided, and he was satisfied the creature wasn’t going to get up again, Khouryn looked to his own hurts. They weren’t too bad—just blisters, basically. The worst damage was to his beard, not that that was an insignificant matter to a dwarf. Still smoking and sizzling in spots, it looked like an army of moths had attacked it, and its nasty burnt stink wrinkled his nose.

  Half humorously, for he’d lived long enough in exile to know which parts of his people’s customs and preoccupations looked comical to outsiders, he told himself that the person who’d conjured the devil would have to pay.

  Maybe that was one of the ash giant adepts. He’d seen them summon a variety of horrors from their round crystal talismans, and it was possible they’d figured out that Khouryn was the one teaching the dragonborn to fight them to better effect. And then they’d decided to sneak an invisible assassin into Djerad Thymar to eliminate him.

  But could a giant, who’d never set foot in the City-Bastion himself, instruct the devil to lie in wait along the particular route that Khouryn most often took to and from the Daardendrien apartments?

  Maybe. Mages found ways to do lots of things that defied common sense. Still, it seemed unlikely.

  He moved to inspect the balustrade.

  Like any dwarf and any siege engineer, he understood stonework, and he saw immediately how the barrier was made of cunningly fitted sections. He saw too how it had been possible to detach one and leave it simply sitting loose in its place.

  But would the devil have known how to do it? And if it had, where had it stashed its tools?

  He wished, as he so often had since offering his services to the vanquisher, that Aoth, Jhesrhi, and Gaedynn were there. They were better at ferreting out secrets. Although it was also a safe bet that the archer would have made merciless sport of his singed and diminished beard.

  Though he found it difficult to like a man who so openly scorned him and all who practiced his trade, Gaedynn had to admit that Hasos had done his bit during the battle. And that, tonight, he’d ordered the captives slain in a relatively humane fashion, by the simple expedient of stabbing them in the heart. Which fortunately seemed to satisfy Tchazzar.

  The dragon had merely instructed that the bodies be laid on a pyre afterward. He then stood on the battlements of the keep, breathing in smoke and the smell of charred flesh like that was the way a god consumed the energy of a sacrifice.

  Eventually he went back inside the citadel with most of the others in his inner circle, and Gaedynn surprised himself by lingering there with only drifting sparks and stars for company. He wasn’t sure why.

  The wind moaned. The fire leaped high, drawing a startled exclamation or two from the folk on the ground who were standing around watching it. The blackened corpses burned to ash in just a few heartbeats, and then the flames subsided to their former level.

  Gaedynn turned and smiled at the woman who’d come up behind him. “Buttercup. I take it that Tchazzar finally decided he could do without you by his side for a little while. Or did you use magic to give him the slip?”

  “Obviously,” Jhesrhi said, “you were able to handle the battle.”

  “I handled it brilliantly,” he said. “So well, in fact, that I think it’s safe to say Aoth has become superfluous. It’s time for the company to chuck him out and follow me. What would you say to a little mutiny?”

  She gave him the scowl that was her frequent response to his jokes.

  “No?” he continued. “Ah well. At least remaining in my current lowly estate will spare me the tedium of keeping track of the supplies and accounts. With Khouryn gone, the chore must be thrice as dreary.”

  “I hope he’s all right,” Jhesrhi said. “I hope he made it home.”

  “The Brotherhood is his home,” said Gaedynn, “and I hope he comes back in time to help us fight the cursed dragons. By the way, I like your new outfit. It’s very Red Wizard.”

  That brought a twist of genuine anger to her expression. “It’s not like … It’s a completely practical robe and cloak for a mage to wear to war.”

  “Is it? Then I suppose I’m just not used to seeing you put on new clothes until the old ones are covered in patches and falling apart even so.”

  “And I’m not used to hearing you speak to me with genuine spite in your taunts. Since you plainly don’t want my company, I’ll bid you good night.” She turned away.

  Fine, he thought, go, but then something made him speak up after all. “Wait. Stay if you like. I’m not an
gry at you.”

  She turned back around and, the golden ferrule of her staff clicking on the timbers, walked to the parapet. “At what, then?”

  He waved a hand at the pyre. It was quickly burning down to orange coals, and the folk who’d stood watching it were drifting away. “That, I suppose.”

  Jhesrhi sighed. “Well, they were just kobolds.”

  “I know. Give Hasos credit for choosing those nasty little brutes if he had to butcher someone. Still, you know me, Buttercup. I’m not chivalrous. I’ll cheerfully slit the throat of every bound, helpless prisoner and his mother too if I see a need for it. But this …” He shook his head.

  “Well,” she said, “each of them had committed treason by taking up arms against his rightful sovereign. It’s common for people to pay for that offense with their lives.”

  “That assumes Chessenta’s claim to Threskel is legitimate. Neither you nor I know that it is.”

  “Or that it isn’t.”

  “My point is that if we don’t know, the Great Bone Wyrm’s people certainly don’t. When they marched to war, they were just obeying the only rulers they’ve ever known.”

  “Maybe when they hear what happened here, they’ll reconsider whether they really want to do that.”

  Gaedynn frowned. “I concede that sending a message might be a sensible reason to slaughter some prisoners. But that’s not why Tchazzar did it.”

  Jhesrhi hesitated. “Sometimes a king doesn’t explain his true reason for doing a thing. Not if he thinks he can gain some advantage by giving a false one.”

  “Why in the name of the Black Bow are you defending him? You thought he was being crazy and cruel just like the rest of us did. That’s why you tried to talk him out of it. And why, just now, you made the fire flare up to burn the bodies quickly. You’re ashamed of what he did.”

  “All right. There may be moments when his mind isn’t altogether clear. If something had tortured and fed on you for a hundred years, you might have the same problem. He’ll mend with time.”

  “Have you seen any signs of it so far?”

  She scowled. “You shouldn’t talk about him this way.”

  “Why not? Are you going to tattle?”

  “Of course not! But when we first arrived, you were impudent to his face. That’s … unprofessional, and bad for the company as a whole.”

  He realized she was right, but he didn’t want to admit it. “I thought working for the zulkirs was bad, but at least they were sane.”

  “You’re only seeing one side of him. He ended the persecution of those with arcane gifts.”

  Which you hope will ensure that no more little girls suffer the way you did, Gaedynn thought. But what he said aloud was, “And, more importantly, gave you the chance to flounce around in silk and jewels and play the princess.”

  “Enough of this,” Jhesrhi rapped. “Enough of you.” She turned back toward the stairs that led down into the keep, and that time, he didn’t try to stop her.

  The battlefield lay in the borderland between the desolation of Black Ash Plain and the fertile fields of Tymanther. There were no columns of solidified ash sliding around—which was good, since the giant shamans used them as weapons. But the vegetation was sparse and twisted, and when the breeze gusted from the south, the air smelled faintly of burning.

  After the dragonborn had destroyed several giant raiding parties, the rest joined together to make a stand. They waited like gaunt, crudely sculpted figures of stone. Medrash studied their ranks, looking for the leader strong enough to unite the once-contentious barbarian tribes. He couldn’t identify him. So far, no one had.

  The giants stood with little apparent organization. Facing them across the length of the field, the Tymantherans had more, although Khouryn had grumbled that they still looked like a motley assortment of little armies instead of one big one. Lance Defenders and anyone else who’d received the dwarf’s training stood in what amounted to one coherent formation, and the warriors who marched under the banners of the Platinum Cadre in another. Small war bands organized by various clans had rather haphazardly taken up positions between and around the two larger ones.

  Balasar naturally stood among the dragon-worshipers. Medrash fought the impulse to make eye contact or even glance in his clan brother’s direction. Balasar had told Nala and Patrin that his newfound devotion to Bahamut had estranged him from his kin, and Medrash didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that impression. He contented himself with silently asking Torm to strengthen his comrade’s arm in the fight to come.

  Horns sounded overhead. Tarhun was in the air riding a bat, and so were the buglers the vanquisher used to relay his orders to his troops.

  Dragonborn archers drew and loosed. Bat riders swooped toward the enemy, and they too shot arrows. Medrash knew that every bowman who’d spotted an adept was trying to eliminate that particular target.

  Meanwhile, the clan wizards chanted in unison. Wind howled in the faces of the giants. The idea was to scour away every stray fleck of ash on the plain before the shamans could use it to conjure one of their reptilian servants.

  The giants heaved enormous javelins and rocks, the raw strength of their towering frames a match for the mechanical power of a bow. Dragonborn reeled and fell. A horse screamed, collapsed, and—rolling and writhing—ground its rider beneath it. A bat plummeted.

  Meanwhile, impervious to the arrows streaking at them—or so it seemed—the adepts brandished their colored globes. The polished curves gleamed in the sunlight, and hulking, scaly creatures sprang into view.

  They didn’t scramble from drifts of ash, because the dragonborn mages had blown those all away. They leaped out of nowhere. Medrash realized they always had. The giants, to confuse their enemies, had simply made it look like ash was necessary.

  A couple of the beasts looked like stunted, misshapen red dragons. Flames leaping not just from their jaws but rippling across their entire bodies, they jumped into the air, lashed their leathery wings, and soared toward the bat riders.

  Other shamans summoned the winged green creatures and gray lizard-bears Medrash had encountered previously. The former hopped and glided, and the latter ran—but snarling and screeching, each charged the dragonborn ranks in its own particular fashion.

  Behind them, hunched, dwarf-sized creatures skulked from nothingness. Their hide hung in loose brown folds, and their long arms dragged on the ground. Evidently intending to harass the Tymantherans from the flanks, they headed for the edges of the field.

  “Lances!” Medrash bellowed. A split second later, the brassy notes of a bugle cut through the air. The vanquisher was ordering him to take the same action he’d just begun on his own initiative.

  He felt taut with eagerness, because he’d learned from experience that Khouryn’s methods worked. And they now had a chance to demonstrate that to a great many dragonborn, the vanquisher included. Everyone would see that Tymantherans didn’t have to betray their ancestors and grovel before those heroes’ ancient enemies to defeat the giants. No matter how many new tricks the savages mastered.

  More smoothly and uniformly than they had mere days before, all the lancers canted their lances at the proper angle. On Medrash’s command, they walked their horses forward. Then trotted. Then cantered. Their weapons dropped to threaten the onrushing saurians, and then they broke into a gallop.

  But Medrash’s brown gelding only ran for a couple of strides. Then the animal balked, nearly pitching its startled rider out of the saddle. The horse tossed its head and whinnied.

  Shields overlapping, all but marching in stride, the spearmen advanced in good order. Khouryn gave a slight nod of satisfaction, then saw disaster strike Medrash’s charging lancers.

  Almost every horse spooked at the same instant. Despite the long weapons in the lancers’ hands, and the way they were riding nearly shoulder to shoulder, some of the steeds managed to halt, turn, and bolt toward the rest of the vanquisher’s army. Their masters were the lucky ones. Other animals
slammed into their fellow steeds and knocked them stumbling, or off their feet entirely. Dragonborn yelled, hauled on the reins, and dug in their spurs, fighting to regain control. Meanwhile the first wave of conjured creatures swept over them. A glider ripped a warrior from the saddle. A lizard-bear seized a horse in its fangs and wrenched it down onto the ground, breaking both its front legs in the process. The steed screamed and thrashed. Vapor billowed from around the reptile’s jaws as its corrosive spittle ate its way into the animal’s flesh.

  “Rock of Battle!” Khouryn cursed. “Charge! Charge!”

  “That will break the formation,” said a sergeant who’d apparently learned the lessons of drill a little too well.

  “To the Abyss with the formation!” Khouryn roared. “Run up there and kill something!” Before the enemy killed every one of the riders.

  Medrash’s horse bucked and reared. He decided he had to get off before the animal threw him. He dropped his lance and kicked his feet out of the stirrups, which made his bouncing perch even more precarious than before. Clinging to his saddle with his one free hand—his shield prevented the use of the other—he swung his leg over the gelding’s back and jumped.

  He landed with a jolt, staggered a step, then caught his balance. All around him, gray and green reptile things lunged and pounced, rending dragonborn who were virtually unable to defend themselves. Posing nearly as much of a danger as the saurians, horses with bloody wounds and fuming burns surged one way and another.

  At least, since he was no longer fighting his own terrified mount, Medrash could more easily focus his will. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then reached out to Torm.

  The god’s Power rushed into him like a flash flood surging down a gorge. He shook his steel-gauntleted fist above his head.

  The sun was shining. A lesser light should have gone unnoticed. But somehow brightness, or a sense of it, pulsed from his hand. With it came a suggestion of quiet that was just as paradoxical amid the roars, shrieks, and crashes of blows on armor. For some distance around him, saurians hesitated in midattack. Horses stopped resisting the dictates of spur and rein.