“I’ve got a friend around here somewhere,” she said.
“A friend? What?” Brenner looked up. “Where’d you find a—”
“God’s stripes, lady, you did it!”
Brenner whipped the hostage closer, the knife digging painfully into her throat. The rune uttered a high moan of pain, but did not flinch.
“Stay back!” the assassin ordered.
“Cut it out, Brenner, it’s not one of those deer things! It says it’s a gnole.”
“A gnole, that’s me.” It blinked up at them in the moonlight. “You want to cut that wicked boss rune’s throat, you do it. I’m not gonna stop you.” It spat on the ground. “Probably safer for all of us.”
Caliban, trying not to think about the bits of dead rat still on his feet, shoved his boots on. No socks. The gods only knew what the rune had done with them.
Brenner, in a display of agility unique to assassins, stepped into his boots without taking the knife away from the rune woman’s throat.
“Let’s move.”
They moved.
The rune didn’t follow. None of them emerged from the earth-lodge for as long as it was visible through the trees.
“Why are they letting us go?” Slate asked. The tattoo had stopped gnawing, blessedly, but every time she took a step, a jolt shot up the side of her body that had impacted the deer-creature’s antlers. The holes weren’t deep, but they were oozing steadily, and the pain was making her list sideways.
“I think she told them to,” said Caliban. “There’s a demon in her, and it wants to get out of here.”
“And we’rehelpingher?”
“If you have a better idea, darlin’, I’m open to suggestions.”
Slate opened her mouth, took another step, felt pain leap from puncture to puncture as if they were stepping stones, and went a bit green.
Caliban tried to get his arm under her shoulders to act as a crutch, but the disparity in their height was too great. The jolts were twice as bad, and she waved him off, growling.
The gnole came to her aid instead, putting an arm around her waist and shoring her up on that side. The creature reeked of garbage and old goat, but it helped. Oddly enough, it didn’t make her sneeze.
“Thanks,” she said, as it helped to haul her up a slope.
“Don’t mention it, crazy lady.”
Slate’s gnole-crutch didn’t slow them up to any significant degree, since Brenner was already hampered by his grip on the antlered doe, and Caliban’s breathing was coming in slow, painful rasps. Slate figured she’d arrived just in time.
She’d watched through the smoke-hole for several minutes, while the old deer woman had been glaring into the knight’s face, and he sat staring into the distance as if drugged. She hadn’t been sure whether to drop down or not, and she’d had no idea that there were dozens of other rune in the lodge, standing outside of her field of vision.
Then the old rune had started strangling Caliban, and she’d done the only thing she could think of.
I could have wished for a better landing, but at least we’re all still alive.
They were most of the way back to the river when they halted, and stood listening.
“Hear anyone after us?” Brenner asked.
They strained their ears.
“Nope,” said the gnole after a minute. “Not hearing nothing.”
“Me, neither,” said Slate.
