Chapter 45
Forty-Five
We were lying there in the dark on someone’s roof. Dathka was on top of me.
“That was kind of you to cushion my fall.”
“You’re welcome,” I wheezed.
It took her a while to get up, on account of what had to be a terrible amount of pain from a cracked humerus. I wasn’t doing so hot myself, but I was in far better shape than her.
I’d managed to get us to the right place. We were atop a six-story building overlooking the lift plaza. There were a bunch of light charms moving along the corkscrew road now as the authorities searched for the troublemakers, but we’d surely glided far enough to have dodged the paladins.
“We should probably keep moving.”
“What’s the point?” Dathka muttered. “We’ve lost the treasure. Father will be so disappointed.”
Her bitter sadness made me thankful my own dad had been a good man. “He’ll live. But you might not if we don’t get you to a healer. At least we’re in the best district to find one of those.”
“No. The Latros have our own healer. I can suffer ’til then.”
“So back to the Slumps it is. What about your vow to kill Gerzog?”
“Right now, my head’s swimming, my arm’s throbbing, and it’s taking everything I have to not vomit from the agony. I’ll get a healing and kill him tomorrow.”
My saint would approve of such persistence. “That’s the spirit!”
We set out across the rooftops. Luckily for us, the houses here were practically stacked on top of each other, and even the alleys were covered or narrow enough they were easy to jump across, so we’d be able to get far away from the Cathedral before we had to find a way to the ground level to cross a major street.
There were no light charms up here, so we had to navigate by the lights from far below.
And the roof tops, though not very steep, were also rather icy.
I was tired and hurting, so I had to be extra careful not to slip.
With my glove used up until I could buy more Clear to enchant it again, if I fell off, I was going down the fast way.
So we moved carefully from chimney to chimney, making our way westward toward the Slumps.
A massive shape rose from shadows of the next roof.
“Gerzog!”
I went for my pistol, but too late; the rush of wings whooshed behind me. Something crashed into my back, and I fell forward, slipping toward the edge. I clawed desperately for purchase on the snow-covered shingles, managed to stop my momentum, then caught a swift boot to the ribs for my troubles.
“Thought you saw the last of us, did ya?”
It was the female mercenary, and it turned out that her stolen priest’s robes had been hiding wings.
These weren’t feathery, but were more like those of a bat.
So that was what the old priest meant when he’d called her a harpy!
And she must have carried the goblin merc with her, because that little bastard came around her legs and kicked me too.
That sent me careening over the edge.
I barely managed to catch hold of the gutter.
While I dangled there, six stories over the street, the goblin stopped directly over me, aimed a wand right between my eyes, and snarled, “We need this one alive, Captain?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Gerzog growled.
Dathka cried out in pain as she got thrown down by Gerzog. “Let go of me, you beast!”
“I lost the lamp. I lost my money. I’m gonna salvage what I can by selling you. Not to Carcalla. Oh no. You don’t get off that easy. I’m gonna sell you to whichever rival hates Carcalla the most, so they can carve you up slow and send him your pieces… Where are the others?”
“Caldwell and Torken got done in by the priests of Saint Violence,” the winged woman reported. “Sorry, Gerzog.”
“Then this is all that remains of my beloved Tooth and Claw.”
“You brought that on yourself,” I shouted.
I held on as best as I could, and managed to get my boots against the bricks below to take a bit of weight off my hands.
That made the gutter creak ominously as it threatened to tear itself off the wall, and the goblin shook the wand to warn me there’d be no funny business.
“Your company’s dead because they followed a greedy fool. ”
“No risk, no reward. I’ll use what I’m paid for her to hire new recruits. We’ll rebuild. There’s always a war in some realm needing our kind. But will anyone pay a single Tetar for your rotten hide, Carnavon?”
“Your mom.”
Gerzog snorted at that. “Kill him, Skelg.”
“Gladly.” The goblin began to announce some power word, but that got real difficult with a mouth that was suddenly covered in shadow spiders. “Ack! Mrumph!”
Skelg lurched back, spitting and clawing at his face.
I recognized that spell. “Rade! Over here!”
“Don’t worry, my friend. Help has arrived.”
I pulled myself up and back over the edge to see Rade Tartaros, sword in hand, striding across the rooftops from the direction we’d come from. A few feet behind him was Krachma, impatiently thumping his mace against his big rocky palm.
“Watch out. Gerzog’s got the shadow-walking charm.”
My warning came too late. These darkened rooftops were such a perfect place to use that enchantment, that Gerzog had already vanished, and taken Dathka with him.
The mercenary must have been done running, because he appeared between Rade and Krachma. It was only the incredible reflexes of our duelist that kept Rade from getting stabbed in the back. Gerzog swung, Rade dove forward, and rolled on his hands and shoulder, coming back up facing his foe.
“Clever trick, orc. But that spell’s from my homeland. I can smell shadow magic a mile away.”
Stuck between two capable foes, Gerzog just gave them both a savage grin. “Catch.” And then he shoved the wounded Dathka toward the edge of the roof.
Krachma just watched her go, but Rade—who considered himself something of a gentleman—threw himself after her just as she went over. He caught her by the cloak, the sudden weight sliding him to the edge of the roof on his belly, where it took everything he had to hold on to her and not slide off.
Gerzog went at Krachma. The two giants collided, and though I couldn’t tell in the dark, I imagined this would make our lob happy for once.
I was forced to stop watching and roll out of the way as the goblin managed to scrape enough spiders off his face to activate his wand.
It hissed and spit as a caustic hole was melted through someone’s roof.
Shingles crumbled and the wood beneath curled and scorched, but he’d missed me.
I set that little fucker on fire.
Skelg caught a snoot full of Red, and there was so much anger driving this Shroud of Fire, that his protective charm only held it off for a few seconds. Then the goblin was trying to run away from me across a slick roof with his hair on fire.
The woman hit me with an air-dagger spell. My Frunza charm flashed and sparked as the first ones bounced off, then I felt a flash of pain as hardened air sliced open my cheek. She’d been aiming for my eyes.
“That’s my boyfriend, bitch!”
Azarin’s Jolt hit one of the mercenary’s bat wings and stuck there, crackling, sparking, and smoking. All the merc could do was twitch as the spell surged through her muscles.
I looked over my shoulder to see Azarin, Trax—and surprisingly enough—Morton, rushing from the other direction across the rooftops.
Seeing prey, Trax moved with incredible speed, covering the distance in seconds, to scoop up the still burning goblin, and before that poor fool had any idea what was happening, Trax was cramming him into his mouth and chewing.
“Hello, Carnavon,” Trax sent enthusiastically. “Thank you for leaving such an obvious trail.”
Arms and legs were hanging out and flopping about—and the noise! The crunching! I was glad the relative darkness spared us from the goriest details.
The goblin screamed at being eaten. The flying woman screamed at the sight and leapt straight into the air.
Gerzog looked back from where he was battling Krachma, to see that he was now badly outnumbered, and no matter how tough he might have been, no one wanted to fight a Squalo.
He stepped away from our lob and vanished into the shadows.
The harpy was flapping and gaining altitude, but Morton shouted, “Not so fast,” as he brought up—not a wand—but a blunderbuss I’d last seen on the wall of the wyvern pens at Smorp Brothers that was nearly as long as he was tall.
BOOM!
The recoil knocked our gnome over backward, but a bunch of holes appeared in one wing. The mercenary shrieked as that wing collapsed, and she went spiraling down. She landed on her hands and knees, and immediately began to beg.
“Wait! Spare me. I can—”
Crunch.
Krachma, being deprived of an orc to fight, promptly bashed her over the head with his mace.
“I think that harpy was surrendering,” Azarin said.
Krachma shrugged.
“I could use some help,” Rade said, still lying on the slick roof, and his grip on Dathka’s hood was the only thing keeping her from falling to her death.
“If you drop your sword, you could use both hands!” Dathka cried.
“I’m far fonder of this sword than I am of you. Krachma, would you kindly assist me?”
The lob bent way over the edge, and with seemingly no effort, hoisted Dathka up and dropped her onto the relative safety of the roof.
During all that, I was searching for any sign of Gerzog. I wasn’t going to let him escape again. “Dathka, what’s the range on your shadow-walking spell?”
“Twenty paces, line of sight. Ten second recharge.”
Gerzog had been looking past Trax when he’d vanished. So I started running that way. As I passed Trax, I said, “Quit eating for a second and help me catch Gerzog.”
“I am happy to assist.”
Blaaaarg. Trax promptly regurgitated the half-chewed goblin, which was, quite possibly, the single worst thing I’d ever seen and definitely the worst sound I’d ever heard. The goblin’s body landed with a wet splat.
Azarin put one hand to her mouth. “Oh, that’s unsettling.” And then she ran after us. As she passed by Morton, she asked, “Are you injured?”