Whisper of Venom

She rubbed tears from her reddened eyes. “What now?”

A part of him answered, Run! Before the ghosts and dragons find us again! But what he said aloud was, “Look. Some of the sellswords are right over there. We’ll join up with them.”

Gaedy

He automatically compensated for the shift and, leading the drake he wanted to shoot, loosed his arrow. The shaft drove into the reptile’s flank, and the creature plummeted.

Gaedy

Though he couldn’t make them out in the gloom, Gaedy

Which didn’t mean she could kill even a young dragon all by herself. He sent Eider winging in her direction.

Meanwhile, the green gained the high air. It shouldn’t have been able to outmaneuver a trained griffon, but maybe Scar was injured. Why not? Everything else was going wrong.

Gaedy

The dragon’s neck whipped, and its jaws opened. Barely visible in the dimness, vapor streamed out.

Scar lashed his wings and dodged. Instantly, the green dived. Somehow, it had predicted in which direction Scar would move and had poised itself to plunge and intercept him and the woman on his back.

Gaedy

The griffon’s talons stabbed deep. Her beak snapped, tearing away chunks of scaly hide and flesh.

The dragon convulsed and rolled over and over as it dropped. Gaedy

As it smashed into the ground, he stroked Eider’s neck and looked down at Jhesrhi. I did that, he thought. Not your stinking Tchazzar.

Then, impossibly, the green’s broken body rolled over and heaved itself to its feet. After all the punishment it had taken, Gaedy

Then he realized it wasn’t. Filthy, stinking necromancy, the same vile art that had nearly destroyed the Brotherhood in Thay, had revived it. But either way, he and Jhesrhi would have to fight it all over again.

The drakes were no bigger than cats. Compared to the enormous horrors on the battlefield, they should have seemed like little more a joke. But, hellishly agile and quick, they swarmed over the rampart and attacked en masse. There were three or four of them for each of the several warriors in their path, and they struck with fangs like needles.

By the time Shala killed two, another was perched atop her shield, its hind legs bent to launch it at her face. Unable to bring the blade of her broadsword to bear, she struck a backhand blow with the pommel. The heavy brass knob caught the drake in midleap and knocked it onto the ground. Instantly, it sprang up and ran at her. She raised her foot and stamped. Bone cracked. She ground the thing beneath her boot until it stopped squirming.

She glanced around. The other small drakes were dead as well. The carcass of the big reptile she’d killed a while before sometimes impeded the rush of other foes to the rampart, and this was one of those moments. As a result, she had a chance to catch her breath and take stock of the situation as a whole.

It wasn’t good. She and her comrades had killed plenty of the enemy, but there were plenty more left, and she thought she glimpsed a new problem-some sort of shadows or phantoms-stalking up the slope. How in the name of the Sunlord were they supposed to contend with those on top of everything else?

Had she allowed it, she could have succumbed to hopelessness or resentment at the sheer unfairness of it all. But she knew she couldn’t afford to feel anything but the will to prevail, or think of anything but strategy and tactics.

She tucked her sword into the crook of her shield arm and reached for the leather water bottle hanging on her belt. Then, a little way down the rampart, Hasos staggered back. His helmet flew off, and the face and crown beneath were dark with blood. A horned, thick-bodied reptile the size of a draft horse clambered over the earthwork after him. Other warriors recoiled from it, opening a wider gap in the line of shields and weapons. Unless somebody did something about it, dozens of saurians would pour through.

Shala grabbed the hilt of her sword and ran toward the trouble. A warrior backpedaled toward her, and she rammed him out of the way with her shield.

As she closed with the reptile, she saw that Hasos had slashed its head and shoulders before it scored on him. That was something, anyway. She cut and added a gash of her own, slicing across one of the wounds the baron had inflicted to make an X under the creature’s right eye.

It roared and pivoted toward her. But the back half of its body was still on the far side of the rampart, and maybe that made it clumsy. When it bit, it wasn’t too difficult to hop back out of range, then slash it across the snout.

Then it spewed fire.

Shala wasn’t out of range of that. Reflex snapped her shield into position to protect her face and torso. But the defense effectively blinded her, and pain still seared her lower body.

Then fangs searing as red-hot iron caught her leg and wrenched it out from underneath her. Her dwarf-forged greave kept the bite from nipping it off immediately. But even enchanted armor wasn’t likely to hold for more than a heartbeat or two. And even if it did, the heat would cook the limb inside.

Bending and twisting at the waist, straining to bring her blade into striking position, she wrenched herself around. Praying the awkward attack would penetrate, she thrust at the creature’s scaly throat.

The sword stabbed deep, and when she withdrew it, steaming blood spurted. The reptile roared, releasing her, then fell over sideways.

But more reptiles were climbing over the rampart after it. She rolled to her feet and caught one squarely between the eyes with another lucky thrust. The beast collapsed. “Chessenta!” she bellowed. “Chessenta!”

And warriors who’d followed her on many a campaign scrambled back to the battle line. Together, they hurled the wave of saurians back.

Next came the shadows, ghastly things that could shrivel a young man into an old one just by touching him. “Sunlords!” Shala shouted. “Kill these ghosts!”

And the priests too heeded her call. They abandoned their fruitless effort to restore daylight to the field as a whole and conjured localized flashes. Those repelled the ghosts or burned them away to nothing.

The next time the combat gave her a momentary respite, she realized that some of her comrades had taken up her battle cry. “Chessenta!” they howled. “Chessenta.”

While others chanted, “Shala! Shala! Shala!”

Aoth surveyed the battle. Neither darkness nor distance impeded his fire-touched vision. But the situation was so chaotic that even he, with all his experience with war, had difficulty making sense of it.