Prince of Lies - James Lowder [132]
Zadok slashed at the scribe. The strike was tentative, more a test of her reflexes than a serious attack, and the blade hissed through the air well in front of her. Nevertheless, Rinda acted as if the knife had come quite close. She leaped back a step then dropped to the ground, sitting right behind the book. She gasped in mock terror, as if she'd stumbled, but her hands trembled not the least as she grabbed for the heavy tome.
The feigned blunder drew Zadok into a charge. He lunged, but the blade met the indestructible bindings of the Cyrinishad, not the woman's throat. With a high, ringing sound, the knife snapped in two. The blade jangled musically as it clattered to the cobbles.
The orc continued forward, but Rinda rolled onto her back and caught the soldier in the stomach with her boot heels. A push from her legs sent Zadok sailing. He landed face-first on the bridge. He skinned his hands bloody and broke both the incisors that jutted up from his bottom lip.
Vrakk and three other orcs staggered to a stop near their fallen comrades. At a gesture from the general, Garm and Zadok were roughly hauled away. "Pathetic," Vrakk puffed.
The scribe winced. "Oh, I don't know. I thought I did rather well."
"Not you." The general jerked a warty thumb over his shoulder. "Them. Two against one. They should've killed you."
Rinda carefully replaced the Cyrinishad in her pack and stuffed the rest of her belongings in around it. "Seems to me you didn't do much better, that first day at my place," the scribe said coldly.
With one hand, the orc lifted Rinda from the ground. His beady eyes were narrowed in mirth. "You pretty good soldier," he said and chuckled basely. It was the first time Rinda had ever heard an orc laugh; the sound reminded her of the sewers gurgling after the spring rains.
Vrakk led Rinda the rest of the way across theForceBridge. More orcs gathered at the southern end, where a small, walled borough of the Keep crouched tensely upon the bank. There was little need for guards at this end of the span, since the wealthy Zhentish families who lived in the borough had either fled long ago or crossed to the better-protected confines of the north bank. From the fine cloaks, polished armor, and jewel-hilted swords the orcs wore, Rinda decided the nobles hadn't left anyone to safeguard their homes from looters.
They climbed one of the twin towers that stood sentinel over the bridge's terminus. When they reached the very top, Vrakk pointed across the Tesh. "Look what we done," he said proudly.
In the city's winding streets, crowds rushed away from the beleaguered western gate and the smoking ruin that was once the darkly gloriousTempleofCyric- though from Rinda's vantage the mobs appeared as little more than groups of ants treading through a maze. The dragons circling the Keep reacted swiftly to the retreat. They focused their attacks on the northeastern gate. That left two avenues of escape for the Zhentish: the river or the twin bridges.
Most of the boats in the harbor had set sail, and all but a handful of them had been capsized or becalmed by the ice and the dragons. Finding the slips empty, a few foolish people tried to swim, but the bitter Tesh froze the life from them before they'd got fifty strokes from shore. With no other options, the mob turned to the bridges.
Patriarch Mirrormane had been certain the Lord of the Dead would answer the city's pleas and strike down the besieging army – so certain, in fact, that he'd failed to consider the bridges a means of escape. So it was that Vrakk and his orcs had been assigned the unglamorous duty of guarding the spans while everyone was gathered in dawn prayer groups. The brutish soldiers had immediately constructed barricades across both bridges, barricades that now kept the Zhentish from fleeing the giants and dragons.
Xeno's lackeys were only now discovering