by Mel Odom
“Kill the halfer!” the smuggler leader shouted.
The crossbowman raised his weapon again, took aim, and fired. The quarrel thunked solidly into the beam, skidding along the wood and ripping a long splinter free. Either the wood or the quarrel kissed Juhg’s cheek and he felt warm blood running down the side of his face.
The crossbowman worked to restring his weapon, but before he could complete the task, one of Jassamyn’s arrows found a home in his heart. He crumpled, dropping the weapon on the ledge where it hit and spun out over the ledge to drop into the flames.
“Throw the boom over!” the smuggler leader ordered.
Other smugglers hurried to get more pitch barrels while their comrades threw rocks down on the four hurrying up the stairs. Raisho was already swinging up the rope ladder. Jassamyn covered him, putting arrows into any that dared advance on the young sailor while Cobner protected her with a shield he’d picked up from the litter scattered around the room. Behind them, Craugh chanted and emerald embers whirled around him while the fire coming from his staff grew brighter. Finally, the wizard thrust the staff forward. A green fireball spat from the staff and slammed into the smugglers awaiting the torch to light their barrels of pitch.
The fireball hit the pitch barrels and blew them backward, dousing the smugglers with oil and setting them alight. Screams of dying men filled the empty hollow of the building. They ran across the second floor landing till they dropped or ran off the edge to plummet to their deaths below, or were mercifully killed by their comrades.
Clinging to the end of the boom arm, Juhg watched in horror as one of the smugglers slid across the floor. At the base of the boom arm, the smuggler levered his sword into it, then twisted viciously upward.
The boom arm shuddered and went up, dipping at the end where Juhg desperately clung. He saw then that the boom arm wasn’t bolted on, just sat onto a support beam so it could freely turn. Weight at the end of the beam normally kept it wedged tight so nothing slipped. With sword blade worked in between, everything slipped incredibly easily.
The smuggler levered his blade again, scooting the beam up another inch or two. At the end of the beam, Juhg dropped another foot, till the incline was drastic and it became harder to hold on.
“You’re gonna die, halfer,” the smuggler chortled.
Pulling himself up, grateful now that he was a dweller and was so small and quick and agile, Juhg rolled forward, tucking his head into his chin, and came up to a standing position on the beam. His large feet overlapped the narrow beam on either side. Evidently the smugglers had been in the habit of winching up small loads.
The smuggler redoubled his efforts to loosen the beam.
Juhg ran forward. Only fifteen feet long, the beam wasn’t an impossible distance to span. However, three steps into it, some eight feet short of his goal, the beam fell away from underfoot. Even as he fell, Juhg threw himself forward, arms outstretched to cover precious inches.
His hands slapped against the ledge, slipped for an instant, then held.
The smuggler cursed in surprise and swung his sword at Juhg’s left hand. Letting go with the hand that was menaced, Juhg dangled from his other hand, swinging wildly. The smuggler drew back and swung at the other hand by that time. Juhg transferred hands again, barely avoiding the terrible blade. The beam plunged into the fire-covered water below.
Quick as a monkey, Juhg swung along the ledge with the smuggler chopping the ledge in his wake. When he had enough clearance, he pulled with both arms and threw a leg over the ledge, trying desperately to scramble up.
“Oh, and you’re a quick one, ain’t you?” the smuggler accused as he crawled rapidly on his hands and knees to reach Juhg.
Just as the man chopped at him, Juhg dropped back over the ledge, then scampered along like a monkey through the trees till he got behind the smuggler. In position there, Juhg hung by one hand and grabbed one of the smuggler’s feet with the other. He pulled with all his strength.
The smuggler had time for a surprised look as he slid across the loose gravel on the ledge. In the next moment, he lunged for a hold on the ledge … and missed. Knowing he was falling to his doom, he screamed until he hit the flaming water and disappeared.
Hating the grisly death he’d pulled the man to, Juhg hardened his heart. After growing up in a goblinkin mine and watching dwellers die harsh deaths around him every day, he’d learned to put his own survival ahead of those who would strip him of his life. He still couldn’t have dealt out the harsh deaths his companions could, but he could fight to live.
Swinging along the ledge, hoping that he didn’t get a poor grip and slip, Juhg reached the far wall away from the smugglers. Arms aching, fear sour in his belly, he pulled himself up to peer over the ledge.
The smugglers hadn’t noticed him, no doubt thinking he had fallen with their comrade. Instead, they’d turned their malicious attentions to Juhg’s friends, holding them trapped along the stairway and unable to employ the rope ladder.
Cobner raged, calling out fierce dwarven curses and challenging his enemies to meet him on common ground. High up on the rope ladder, Raisho clashed swords with a smuggler attempting to slice through the strands. Standing his ground, his pointy hat pierced by a crossbow quarrel, Craugh raised his staff and spoke words of power again.
A green blaze whipped from the staff as Craugh waved his weapon. Eldritch flames snaked along the ledge, temporarily breaking the smugglers’ defense. Jassamyn took advantage of the wizard’s attack to put a shaft though another smuggler.
Fewer than twenty smugglers remained, but Juhg couldn’t be certain of the exact number due to the shifting shadows along the second floor. The lower floor was brightly lit by the flaming oil. Unfortunately, the smoke from the burning pitch was pooling in a great cloud against the building’s third floor ceiling, growing thicker and creeping down.
The air already burned Juhg’s lungs and nose to breathe, and his eyes burned and blurred with tears. If his friends simply left, provided they could find a way through the flames and into the water below without having the pitch stick to them and kill them or at least hamper them, they could wait till the smoke overcame the smugglers.
But they won’t leave me, Juhg realized, and he felt partially responsible for their plight. If he’d taken more care he wouldn’t have gotten captured. Desperate, knowing that the smugglers’ efforts to crush his friends with the rocks would succeed sooner than later, he hauled himself over the ledge.
Movement scurried along the ceiling above him. He gazed up, seeing the spiders crawling through the massive hammock webs. Their eyes glowed in the darkness, either from an inner light or from the flames burning below. Smoke collected in the webs, causing them to sag in places.
A smuggler turning to grab a rock spotted Juhg standing on the ledge. “Over here! The halfer is over here!” He dropped the rock and freed the short sword at his hip, lurching forward with teary eyes caused by the smoke.
Swiftly, his mind concocting the plan on the spot, Juhg bent and picked up a short sword, preferring that weapon’s length over the knife at his ankle. He ran back from the man, running toward the crates against the back wall of the room. Evidently the smugglers had brought stolen provisions into their hiding place. Some of the crates were broken up for use as kindling.
Another of Craugh’s magic fireballs detonated in the ranks of the smugglers, scattering a half dozen men in different directions. Two smoldering bodies did not get up to return to the fray.
Juhg leapt up onto the crates, narrowly avoiding the smuggler’s sword blow as the man closed the distance between them. Lifting the sword as he gained the top of the stack with another jump, he slashed along the wall, reaching as far as he could. The hammock webs parted as easily as the smoke pillowed against the room.
The effort, immersed as he was in the thicker smoke atop the line of crates, brought on a coughing fit that made Juhg feel as though his head was going to explode. He jumped to another crate, leaping over the
smuggler’s keen blade as he slashed at Juhg’s feet.
All along the wall, Juhg continued cutting the hammock webs, freeing them from their moorings. The webs shook and vibrated from his blows, and it was evident that the strands were weighing more and more from the gathering smoke. Before he reached the back wall, still staying ahead of the smuggler who had pursued him from the beginning and another that had joined in the first’s efforts, the spider-laden web tore free and swung toward the knot of surviving smugglers.
“Look out … below!” Juhg managed before the smoke triggered a coughing fit that took him to his knees.
The hammock webs struck the smugglers squarely, falling around them like a heavy drape. Frightened by the unaccustomed smoke and noise, the spiders attacked the men beneath them immediately. Their glowing eyes made them appear even more fierce.
Hoarse, fearful shouts ripped free of the smugglers. Abandoning their attack, they concentrated on their own problems, striving to dust the fist-sized spiders from their faces, arms, and bodies.
Unable to take another step, Juhg hunkered down on the crate. He tore a length from the bottom of his wet shirt and tied it around his head over his mouth and nose. The wet cloth served to filter a lot of the smoke, though it was still hard to breathe.
With no one guarding the rope ladder, Raisho easily made the ascent and stood guard as Cobner threw down his shield and climbed up after the young sailor. Craugh followed next while Jassamyn kept watch with her bow until finally it was her turn.
Beneath the hammock webs, the smugglers quickly stopped struggling. Evidently the spiders carried some sort of venom, though Juhg didn’t know if it was lethal or merely toxic enough to cause paralysis. He found he really didn’t care. Either would have been fine.
Only three of the smugglers hadn’t fallen to the spiders’ venom. They made the mistake of attacking Raisho and Cobner. Cobner killed one of them almost offhandedly with his battle-axe and the two survivors quickly surrendered, though they pleaded to be allowed to move away from the webs where their comrades lay conquered.
Cobner allowed the surrender but stood over them with his weapon ready.
Jassamyn alighted on the ledge as well. She plucked a scarf from somewhere in her clothing and knotted it around her face.
“Scribbler!” Raisho called.
“Here,” Juhg called from atop the crates. The two smugglers coughed and wheezed below him. The hammock webs had missed them.
Raisho started forward at once, walking around the outer edge of the hammock webs where the frenzied spiders still crawled. Firelight skated along his blade, though it was dulled because of the matte finish he preferred for night work. He halted a few feet from the smugglers, spotting Juhg atop the crates.
Lifting his cutlass meaningfully to the two smugglers by Juhg, Raisho said, “Ye have a choice: surrender or die. Makes me no nevermind.” He struggled not to cough but was overcome all the same.
Neither of the smugglers felt compelled to fight. They threw their blades down and lay on the ground at Raisho’s direction.
As if untouched by the smoke, Craugh walked to the middle of the ledge. He took off his pointy hat and pulled the crossbow quarrel from it. With the hat back on his head, he glared at the smoke. He spoke arcane words in a guttural voice thickened by the smoke, then lifted his staff. Emerald embers swirled around the end of his staff, then darted out into the center of the smoke mass gathered at the ceiling.
Coughing and struggling to breathe, Juhg clambered down from the crates. His lungs felt like they were on fire, and it seemed like coals burned in his eyes.
Slowly at first, but with gathering speed, the emerald embers began a circular motion. As the speed increased, a funnel formed and the smoke was sucked up toward the opening in the third floor.
Moving so that he could see better, Juhg watched as the smoke slid up through vents in the third floor ceiling.
Craugh turned his attention to the flaming pitch still burning across the surface of the water below. The funnel elongated, reaching over the ledge and snaking down to the flames, then pulled them up through the third floor ceiling as well.
As the fire left the building, the room grew steadily darker.
“Apprentice,” Craugh said. “There are lanterns in those crates. It might be an idea if you lit some of them before we end up in the dark.”
His lungs and eyes already feeling better, though he’d just noticed that he’d abraded his fingers with all his clever scampering along the ledge, Juhg went to get the lanterns.
12
Dead End
As it turned out, the spiders’ venom wasn’t lethal, but it did deliver a long-lasting paralysis.
In the lantern light, Juhg examined one of the spiders killed by the fire as he listened to Craugh’s interrogation of the smuggler leader, Dusen. He thought the spiders might have been kin to the strider spiders that commonly lived in the area in pools of water. Or perhaps they were kin to the coffin spiders that lived in the woods along the mainland and sometimes ended up floating in spider eggs into Imarish.
Only strider spiders weren’t as big as his fist like these were, and coffin spiders were known to kill a grown person with a single bite. Glancing at the swelling on the smuggler leader’s scarred face, Juhg judged that the bites were necrotic and would probably leave cherry-sized pits in the flesh that might never heal properly. The effect was not going to improve Dusen’s already ragged features.
Dusen kept his story simple, but Juhg felt certain the man was in a lot of pain and not all that interested in lying. He lay paralyzed and helpless, and he said the bites felt like coals dug in tight against his flesh. Several of the other smugglers had groaned and moaned terribly, until Craugh—finally tiring of the caterwauling—put them all to sleep with a spell.
“I’m the son of a merchant,” Dusen insisted. “I’ve just fallen upon hard times. I don’t deserve to be treated like this.” He managed to throw his head around a little.
Unimpressed, Craugh peered down at his captive. “You’re a thief.”
“Through no fault or intention of my own,” Dusen said. “My father was a guildsman, a man of considerable wealth. The other guildsmen grew jealous of him, though. They started taking their business elsewhere. Soon my father fell upon hard times.”
Silently, and perhaps a little pessimistically, Juhg guessed that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in Dusen’s case. Probably his father was a bad thief as well. Or an overly greedy one.
“It wasn’t long before my father lost his fleet of trading vessels,” Dusen said. “He hanged himself from the clock tower in the Metalworks District. It was a terrible thing. I was ordered up to cut him down.” His eyes turned down and crocodile tears poured down his cheeks. “It was the … hardest … thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Raisho rolled his eyes.
“After my father’s death, after my mother was thrown from our house and we were left to fend for ourselves in the street,” Dusen went on, “I started stealing from the guildsmen that had broken my father. I only saw fit to take back what they had stolen from my father.”
“What of your mother?” Jassamyn asked in a voice that offered only cold rebuke. “Did you leave her to fend for herself as well?”
Dusen thought quickly. “Of course not!” It was hard acting haughty when he didn’t have body language to use. “I took care of her until she died … from … from a broken heart. It was terrible, I tell you. Just watching her wither away. My wife tried to help but—b—”
“Wife?” Cobner growled.
“Yes,” Dusen said. “Didn’t I tell you? I have a wife and son. A wonderful woman, actually, and hardly deserving of the cruel life fate has thrust upon her when I lost my inheritance. And my son, truly a wonderful lad. Smart as a whip, too.”
“A wife and son?” Cobner shook his head, then stuck his finger down his throat and made retching noises.
Dusen’s eyebrows leaped. “You don’t believe me?”
&
nbsp; “No,” Cobner said. “I think ye’re wastin’ our time.”
“It’s true!” Dusen said. “Everything I have told you is true!”
Settled on his haunches and looking totally comfortable with unconscious, spiderwebbed smugglers lying strewn all around him, Craugh looked at the smuggler leader. “Enough!”
Dusen started in again, pointing out that he should be shown forgiveness. After all, it was dark and he couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t been under attack by the Imarish Peacekeepers, who had helped his father hang himself as it turned out. And the Peacekeepers only wanted him dead, Dusen insisted, because they didn’t like the competition he brought to their own efforts to steal the city blind.
Craugh gestured with a forefinger. A single green spark sailed from his forefinger to touch one of the spiders, which still crawled over the inert bodies of the smugglers. He had laid out a small spell that kept the spiders from coming among them.
Summoned by the wizard’s magic, one of the fattest and ugliest spiders Juhg had ever seen scuttled across the gravel-covered expanse of the ledge. Jassamyn stepped back from the horrid thing.
It would take an elven warder to find love in his heart for such a thing, Juhg decided.
“No!” Dusen cried. “Make it go away! Don’t let it near me!” With the paralysis, he couldn’t do anything but watch the spider’s dedicated approach with his single, wide-open eye.
The spider caught hold of the smuggler leader’s hair and climbed up on top of his head. Stopping on Dusen’s eyepatch, the spider rocked back onto its hindmost legs and prepared to strike.
Dusen screamed. The tortured sound ululated through the empty building.
“Now,” Craugh said calmly and coldly, “you will speak only when I ask you to. Otherwise the spider will bite your eye and that sight will be the last thing you ever see because the poison will rot your flesh. Do you understand?”
Nausea stirred in Juhg’s stomach. He knew from past experience that Craugh could be hard and merciless, but he had never seen the wizard take such advantage of a helpless foe.