Fortress Draconis by Michael A. Stackpole Page A

punctuating each motion with a ringing laugh.
    A third time Will threw. The gibberer flicked its paw at the missile, then shrieked. The bladestar had stuck it all the way through, with the sharp silver point spiking out the back. The gibberer dropped its longknife to pluck the star out, but before it could, the poison took hold. The creature dropped to the ground and thrashed its life out in the bloody stream.
    Will started forward, intending to scoop up the gibberer’s knife and help Resolute, but saw almost immediately that wasn’t necessary. One gibberer spun away, hands futilely attempting to stop blood spurting from a slashed neck. The other staggered as Resolute stabbed his left longknife deep into its thigh. His other blade came up, over, and down in a crushing blow that pulped the gibberer’s skull. The creature melted into a boneless pile of mottled fur.
    The fact that he wasn’t needed was not what stopped Will from moving forward. Something tugging at his left ankle accomplished that. He turned and tried to jump back, but caught his heels on a rock and went down hard. A bloodied hand kept grasping at his boot as the body attached to it slowly emerged from a pile of animal skins, like a caterpillar undulating from a cocoon.
    Wide white eyes stared at him from a face that was a mask of blood. The jaw worked, but no sound came out of the mouth. Then Will realized he could see the person’s teeth, all of them, and that what he had taken as a blood-clotted beard …By the gods, they peeled his face off, left it hanging…
    The youth reeled away and vomited. On his hands and knees he tried to crawl away, but shudders shook him violently. He could hear the faceless man inching toward him, through the sand. He could feel fingers scrabbling against his boot, clutching him by the heel. He moved away a foot or two, shying from a dead gibberer in the stream.
    Suddenly death lay everywhere around him, choking him. He heaved again, his vomit annihilating the dark bloodstain in the sand. He shoveled a handful of sand over it, then let another handful drift down from his hand, breathing deeply of the dust. It made him sneeze, clearing his nose of the scent of blood and sickness.
    But I can still smell death.
    Someone crouched in front of him. “It’s over, Will, all over.
    Will slumped onto his right hip, but refused to look back toward his feet. “The man back there.”
    Crow shook his head. “He’s gone now. He might have been in a lot of pain, but at least he lived long enough to see his torturers die.”
    “But, what they did to him.” Will shivered. “They peeled his face off.”
    “Crow, get over here!” Resolute, on one knee beside a different bundle of skins, pointed his left hand at the hillside. “Will,metholanth, now!”
    The order pumped steel into his limbs and coursed fire into his muscles. Will scrambled to his feet and ascended the hillside quickly, on hands and feet. Grabbing tree roots and bushes he pulled himself up, anxious to be away from the carnage. He found themetholanth bush and stripped off several branches, then laid hold of the main stem. Letting his anger and fury course through him, he tugged and twisted, yanked and pulled. He ripped the bush from the ground in a shower of earth, unbalancing himself. He crashed onto his back and rolled down the hill, bouncing off trees, bumping over logs.
    Reaching the floor of the bowl, Will leaped the corpse that had grabbed at him and skidded to a stop beside the body Resolute and Crow worked on. They’d stripped away the young woman’s furs. She had several cuts that he could see on her legs and arms, one across her belly, and another on her forehead, but none seemed deep. Crow used a damp piece of cloth to wash away the blood.
    Resolute stripped leaves off the bush and started to chew them. He glanced at the uprooted bush, then at Will, and shook his head. “You have a mouth, boy. Chew.”
    Will nodded and started chewing leaves into a green pulp. Themetholanth’s