The Iron Ring by Auston Habershaw Page B

away from the door and was halfway across the room toward Tyvian. In between its devastating attacks, he noted that the gnoll was still casting significant glances in his direction.
    Tyvian grimaced and, hoping Artus’s sacrifice would give him a good head start, beat a hasty retreat.
    He had barely made it up the back stairs to the deck of the river-­inn and slammed the door behind him when he was doubled over by a white-­hot flash of searing pain. He fell to a crouch and beat his hand against the planks. “Stop . . . it . . . stop . . . it . . . you . . . son of a bitch!”
    The pain did not stop, but Tyvian managed to stand anyway and ran, blindly, along the slick, snow-­dusted decks of the Wandering Fountain. With every step, he felt as if more of his hand began to blister and burn away, but he ran anyway. His mind raged, I will not be controlled. I will NOT be controlled!
    He tripped on a rope and rolled down a flight of stairs, hand and arm clutched to his chest, his breathing ragged. Barely aware of where he was, he screamed down at his hand. “KROTH’S TEETH! What do you want me to do? You want me to go back there and die? What would that accomplish?”
    Face a mask of determination, Tyvian rolled to his knees and shuffled back up the stairs and onto the deck. His vision was blurred with tears as the ring seemed to brand his very bones with its infernal heat, the pain throbbing from his fingertips to his shoulders. He dared not look down, convinced that all that remained of his right hand was bones and ash.
    Ahead, dimly, he thought he saw a stable. Yes! A horse! If he could just climb atop one and spur it on, it would take him away. With any luck, the gnoll would be too injured from the fight to follow. Determination revitalized, he staggered to his feet and across the deck, vision tunneling so that all he could see was the door to the stable in front of him. The ring blazed on, punishing him, but with each step, Tyvian felt the pain fade. He was beating it! He laughed, thinking of that prig, Eddereon. “Your ring’s no match for me! I knew it! I knew it!”
    He reached the door, the pain almost all gone. He pulled it open, stepped inside . . .
    . . . and found himself in the back hall of the galley again.
    â€œWhat? Kroth!” Tyvian whipped the door back open and looked out. There, in the growing moonlight, he could see his footsteps silhouetted clearly in the snow. They staggered from side to side along the river-­inn’s decks, but ultimately went in a circle.
    He glared down at the ring. His hand was completely unharmed. “You sneaky bastard.”
    There was a thunderous crash from the galley, and Tyvian heard Artus yell in pain. The ring pinched him.
    Tyvian, scowling, shook his head. “Well, since I have no choice . . .”
    A rtus was the only human left in the room who wasn’t unconscious or too injured to move. His mouth was bleeding and his left eye was swollen shut, but he wasn’t down yet. His knife lay on the floor halfway between him and the hulking mass of fur and teeth that was the gnoll. The two of them circled around it, but neither advanced.
    What little Artus knew about fighting he had learned as a child with his older brothers and then, later, as a matter of survival in the alleys and slums of Ayventry. In both cases the winners were usually the bigger and meaner parties, unless the little guy used a cheap shot. In the case of the gnoll versus himself, Artus had little doubt who was the bigger and meaner fighter. It only remained to be seen if he, Artus, could get in that cheap shot. Trouble with cheap shots, though, was that if they didn’t win the fight immediately, you’d better be able to run away real fast.
    Somehow Artus doubted he would outrun the gnoll.
    Tyvian, it seemed, was long gone. Artus wanted to say he didn’t care, but he couldn’t, quite. The