Tangled webs - Elaine Cunningham [164]
The ranger leaped back, staring with dismay into the leering face ofhis partner and friend.
"You should have believed the drow," Sittl said. He lunged again as he came to his feet, his dripping blade leaping for the ranger's throat.
Xzorsh parried the strike. "i'i did believe her, as i believed you until your own words proved you a liar." "Unlikely," sneered the malenti. "i'i made no mistake that a trusting fool such as you might notice."
"The dead child, the one found aboard the ship," the ranger returned coldly. "You told me she was yours in order to gain my sympathy and thus cover a lapse in your facade. But i found the child's true father; he fights at my side."
"i'i don't see anyone with you at the moment."
With this taunt, Sittl advanced in a flurry of slashing blows. Xzorsh held him off, but his wounded hand was numb and his grip made slippery by his own blood. In moments, Sittl knocked the weapon from Xzorsh's hand. A wide smirk spread across the malenti's elflike face. "You do not know how many times i have longed for this moment," he exulted.
The triumphant smile disappeared as his head was jerked sharply back to strike the metal bar of the cage with a sharp thud. White hands deftly wrapped Sittl's long, plaited hair around his neck. Holding the braid in both hands, the Northwoman leaned back hard, tlrowing the force ofher weight behind the impromptu garrote. Although Sittl's webbed hands tore at his treacherous braid, he could not dislodge it from his tlroat. His eyes bulged, and his tongue protruded, wagging in a grotesque and silent counterpoint to the Northwoman's furious battle cry.
Merciful Xzorsh picked up his knife and ended the creature's life in one quick stroke. Then he and the Northwoman began to fight their way back toward their overwhelmed and retreating forces.
Rethnor raised his eyeglass and gazed with satisfaction at the battle raging before him. The darkening sky was bright with flaming arrows and the leaping flames ofburning ships. Somehow Ruathym had seen beyond the rumors of a raid and had mustered an impressive sea force to meet the invasion. Even so, a fleet of thirty Luskan warships could more than match the motley flotilla that came to meet them. Nearlyas destructive as the fire, and almost invisible in the gathering darkness, were the two water elementals that surged and retreated, dealing swift blows to the Ruathen vessels and then disappearing into the waves. The water wraith, iskor, was doing her work well. Rethnor smiled broadly as a dragon ship was capsized by the force and fury of an elemental's attack.
Then, before his astonished gaze, the sea stirred wildly, and an enormous serpentine creature rose from the waves and of the waves. The gargantuan water snake spoke in a roar audible even through the distance that separated Rethnor from the battle. The elementals responded at once. Acting in concert, the creatures lifted a Luskan warship from the water, upended it, and drove it prow-first into the sea. Rethnor waited, breath abated, for the ship to bob to the surface.
it did not.
And neither did the elementals reappear. The watery sea serpent, however, advanced upon the nearest of Rethnor's ships. It dove over the ship and circled around, looping it twice, three times, in its enormous coils. When the ship was utterly engulfed, the creature began to squeeze; in moments the wooden ship splintered with a boom like that of summer thunder. The creature sank into the waves, drawing the ruined ship toward whatever watery hell had spawned its captor.
Rethnor cursed bitterly. Such horrors could only mean the drow wizard was still alive, and more powerful than before. He trained his eyeglass toward the shore, drawn by a light shining high above on the rocky cliffs. There, blaz-
ing against the night sky, was a tiny, familiar figure limned with light and magic. The wizard floated in the air, her dark hands outstretched like the talons of a striking hawk. Well, there was one way to bring the thrice-damned elf wench to heel. The High Captain swept