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ineffectual. She dropped into a crouch, hearing someone approach from her
left. A pair of black-clad legs went past her, paused. Talons checked. He was
alone. She rose, coming silently behind and slightly to the side. With a
thought she summoned the tigers-claws to her hands. Her first slashing attack
took out his throat; he would not be calling for help. He staggered back,
hands to his throat, making gurgling noises. She opened him up from breastbone
to groin, catching him as he fell. She lowered him silently to earth. Except
for the dragon and rowans charm around his neck, he wore no livery. She
snapped the charm free, slipping it in her pocket.
Talons had seven of them now, more than enough proof that something dark and
dangerous was happening on Dragonshead. She had not found the entrance to the
chambers beneath, but after a day of searching they had found her. Now she had
to get off the bluffs alive. She moved quickly down the overgrown path, back
the way her pursuer had come, moving lightly, soundlessly on the balls of her
feet, pausing repeatedly to listen.
Time was of the essence: she had overheard two stone trolls talking and knew
that Wilstryn's plan to have Laeoli run away had been discovered by the enemy.
There was a traitor in Wilstryn's ranks. Worse, when Ladonys and Laeoli rode
to the hunt on the morrow, they would both die and Wilstryn with them, unless
Talons could get off the bluffs and intercept them in time.
She could see the red-veined outcropping of gray stone marking the entrance
to a narrow defile that Wilstryn's eldest daughters had mapped on their
earlier reconnaissance searching for Sohkoran. It narrowed until a single
person could barely squeeze through. It was there they had found his body.
Laeth Hornbow had barely gotten through it and she was far more slender than
Talons. The assassin hesitated, wondering whether to try it or attempt to
cross the open again, making for a hunter's trace she had found a day ago.
A long howling began behind her, coming swiftly on. Gods in Hell! They had
brought out the hounds. Her decision was made for her. Talons leaped, rolling
into the stone mouth. She came to her feet, blades in hand drawn from her
bandoleer. She scampered down the defile, moving as quickly as she could
despite a broad carpeting of loose stones. The stone shifted and scraped
beneath her feet, loose stones rattling down the steep path. "No way in hell
to move silently," she muttered, grimly consoling herself with the knowledge
that they would have to come at her one at a time and they would die one at a
time.
She worked her way past a jutting edge of blade sharp stone. A rock turned
under her foot, throwing her forward. She threw out her hands to save her face
and a sharp fragment sliced her leathers, leaving a long gash down her right
arm. "Gods shitting pig-cunts," Talons cursed, pulling a clean handkerchief
from inside her tunic to quickly bind the cut without pausing in her retreat.
There were bits of stone all through the wound, but she would have to pick
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them out later, praying it didn't infect.
The howling neared. Talons looked up to see the first hellhound racing toward
her. She threw her blades. The first slender missile caught it in the
shoulder, but the second entered its eye, driving deep into the creature's
brain. Talons turned, moving as quickly as the narrowing stone walls would
allow.
Again stones turned and she staggered, falling, this time into something soft
and wet. Rancid odors assailed her, the smell of death. Maggots swarmed the
rotted flesh inches from her nose. Talons came stumbling to her feet, her
stomach heaving, bits of rotted flesh clinging to her, covering her in
nightmarish filth. She glanced back, hearing the next hound coming on. "Gods
in Haven," she muttered. rotting recent dead carpeted the defile. "Must be
over a hundred..." She could stand and fight or wade through a sea of rotted
flesh swimming with maggots.
The second hound slammed her in the back, knocking her face down into the
filth. She twisted, rolling, bringing her claws into play. Teeth closed on her
left shoulder, biting through her leathers. Her first swipe took out it eyes
and her second its throat all in a single heartbeat. She threw the carcass
off, rising again to jog through the corruption. Several times, her gorge rose
and she felt an urge to vomit, forcing it down again. Talons had killed many
myn in her short years, but they had all been clean kills, in and then out
again, never looking back at the aftermath of mortality.
The throbbing pain of her wounds cleared her head, forcing her to focus on
escape, on taking that next step, leaving her no space for morbid musings. She
could see that narrowest spot that Laeth Hornbow had written of in her notes.
Talons slowed as she reached it, knowing at a glance that she was trapped:
even if she stripped naked, she could not squeeze through. She scanned the
walls. The gap widened near the top. She pressed her hands and back against
the wall, then braced one foot and then the next against the opposite wall.
She walked up the wall. When she reached a wide enough spot, she placed her
feet on opposite sides of the cliff faces, moving now crab like above the
narrows.
The setting sun offered her hope; for once it set, her cloak of darkness
would hide her from pursuit. But her attackers did not give her that chance.
Arrows flew about her. One struck her in the back, just below her left
shoulder blade. She lost her grip, sliding and falling down, scrabbling at the
rocks. She summoned her claws, scratching for small holds that slowed her fall
a bit. Then she slipped again, twisting. Her back struck the wall, breaking
the long shaft off and turning the head in her wound. Consciousness grayed
out. She hit the bottom hard.
Strong hands gripped her, lifting her with a blade at her throat. A lantern
was briefly unshielded and a familiar face looked into hers. "Talons?"
The knife was withdrawn, sheathed. "Talons?" The voice queried again, "Come
on, kid, we gotta get out of here."
"We've wired it, Ma'aram," came a young girl's voice out of the darkness.
"You got the fuse lit, Lizard?" Birdie called.
"Uh huh."
Blackbird chuckled, "Knew those blasting powders would come in handy one day.
Dwarves send things off with a bang. 'Bout two, three times as strong as
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Iradrim Fire. You've seen that blow." She shouldered Talons' weight with her
good arm. "Lizard, Arruth, Jysy, I need some help, she's heavy. We gotta get
outta here."
Each of the larger youths grabbed a limb, lifting Talons from every corner.
They rushed around a nearby bend in the defile, crouching down and pressing
against the wall. A tremendous roar filled the night as the entire defile
shuddered and exploded. Rocks showered them, punctuated by screams of anguish
and agony coming from back the way Talons had come.
The lantern was unshuttered again, lowered closer to Talons' face. One of the
children lifted her head up as another brought a flask to her lips. Talons
drank gratefully, tasting the sweetness of holadil mixed with other things she
did not recognize. Her pain eased enough for her to speak and she poured it
all out to Blackbird, knowing her for an ally.
Blackbird nodded. "You got shifter troubles. We got one," she said, lifting a
severed head from a bag. "If the kids'er right, ya got two more to deal with."
"Ladonys..."
"Don't know what to do about that. Urchins and I'll figure something out. I
don't let people take out my friends."
Talons sighed, slipping into the darkness.
* * * *
"The wynderjyns rejected me," Margren said, sipping at her wine.
They sat in a small parlor. Heavy dark drapes, red-black like dried blood,
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