Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [67]
The guard sprawled back against the side of the tunnel, and Dougal had the tip of his ebon sword under the man’s unprotected chin before he could recover. The man froze, and Dougal looked into his terrified eyes and said, “Give up.”
Knowing that he had no other option, the guard let go of his sword, and it clattered on the tunnel’s floor. A moment later, Gullik’s axe flew past Dougal’s side to bury itself in the man’s neck.
Dougal grabbed the guard to see if he could save him, but the man was already dead. Dougal spun to see the norn coming toward him to collect his axe.
“You stupid—” Dougal bit his tongue in an effort to control his fury. He was angrier at the norn than he’d been with the guard who’d been trying to kill him. “You didn’t need to do that!”
Gullik smiled at him grimly. “And you, good fellow, are welcome! It’s not every day I get to save a human’s life.”
Dougal gripped his sword so hard, he felt like his knuckles might pop out of his skin. “He surrendered!”
“He and his friends meant to kill us. They fired on us. They charged us, blades bared. This one chose his fate.” The norn clapped Dougal on the back. “If it makes you feel better, I will speak well of him when I tell this part of my saga. And of the others as well.”
Dougal surveyed the tunnel. The cooling corpses of the black-and-gold-uniformed guards who’d ambushed them littered the ground, their blood running down the tunnel that had brought them from the world above to spill into the river of sludge and be carried away. Most of the rats had run off as quickly as they’d come, but a few still nibbled on the bodies of the guards they’d killed.
Every one of his compatriots seemed fine. The hail of bullets had ripped smoking channels through Ember’s orange fur but not her flesh. She wiped the blood from her claws, while Gullik did the same with his axe. Killeen leaned over one of the rat-eaten guards, examining him closely. Riona knelt on one knee, staring down in abject horror at the woman she’d been battling. From the amount of the female officer’s face that was missing, Dougal guessed that Ember had helped dispatch her.
Kranxx stood in front of his open pack, a bottle of bright blue fluid in his hand. “Anybody hurt?” he asked. “I’ve got a healing potion right here. I made it myself, and I’m eager to see how it turned out.”
The asura’s face fell when no one tried to claim his offered potion. “Anyone? Ember? No? All right, then.” He rewrapped the potion and placed it back in his pack. “I’ll just save it for later.”
Dougal kicked the rats off the fallen guards, and they scampered away. Killeen noticed him shooing them away and blushed, turning a deeper shade of green.
“It’s rare that I get to examine deaths this fresh,” she said.
Dougal nodded, then sheathed his blade and put his head in his hands. He heard Killeen start to mutter something, but he ignored it. He needed to shut it all out for a minute.
“The Ebon Vanguard is the law in this city,” Dougal said, to himself more than anyone else. “And we just killed them.”
“Then it is good that we’re leaving,” said Ember. She arched her back and cracked her knuckles. “And better that we are not coming back.”
Riona put a hand on Dougal’s shoulder as he walked back toward the sewage tunnel. “I know,” she said. Her voice was soft and low, but her eyes were wide and troubled: mirrors of Dougal’s own. “They fired on us first. We had to defend ourselves.” Unspoken was the question, If you had listened to me—if Ember had been kept in her chains—could this have been avoided?
Dougal grimaced as he looked down at the ruined corpse of the man he’d been fighting. He was younger than Dougal, but a stranger. If Dougal hadn’t left Ebonhawke, they might have served together in the Vanguard. Now the man