Temple Hill - Drew Karpyshyn [55]
He thrashed his head desperately from side to side as he lay on the ground, the poisoned tail jabbing at him again and again, each time striking the ground mere inches from his face. Corin rolled out of range and scrambled to his feet, driving the creature back away from Lhasha with another series of attacks to its bleeding torso.
From the corner of his eye Corin stole a quick peek at the inured half-elf. She was leaning against the wall, the wound to her leg tied off to stanch the bleeding. Then she slumped to the floor, succumbing to the poison coursing through her veins.
Lhasha's collapse triggered something in Corin, a warrior's lifetime spent training in the arts of hand to hand combat snapped, leaving only a being blind with rage and intent on revenge. Corin hurled himself at the naga, heedless of his own safety.
For a brief moment Corin's defenses were down, leaving him wide open to any and all attacks from his foe. The naga was taken aback by the mindless ferocity of the sudden assault, the sudden shift from the tactical approach it had begun to expect. Retreating from the berserk warrior's wrath, it missed its chance to strike, and then Corin was on it.
He swung without thought, without strategy or technique. Primal fury fueled his blows. Stumbling forward in a blind madness he struck at the head, the tail, the body; overwhelming the creature with animalistic rage, hacking and chopping until his foe was nothing but a mass of bloody, quivering pulp beneath his relentless blade.
The magical silence ended at last, the spell spent. The thick, wet sounds of his blade butchering the naga's corpse touched the small part of Corin's mind that was still capable of rational thought. The sudden noise jarred him, brought him back to his senses. He dropped his gore-covered blade and ran to Lhasha.
He swept her up from the floor, her tiny frame all but weightless in his arms. She was breathing softly, but made no response when he called her name. He peeled back an eyelid, but her pupils had rolled back into her head.
He must take her to Fendel. The gnome had saved Corin from poison. He could save Lhasha, if he saw her in time, but it was a long, long way to the House of Hands.
Corin slung Lhasha's body over his right shoulder, holding her in place with the crook of the elbow on his amputated arm. With a speed born of desperate urgency he clawed his way up the collapsible ladder without a second thought, his fear of heights pushed from his consciousness by his concern for Lhasha.
Up in the rafters he draped Lhasha's inert form over the beams so she wouldn't fall off, then he began to pull the ladder up after him, stuffing the pieces into Lhasha's carrying pack as he disassembled them. He'd need the ladder to get down from the roof once they were outside the building.
He wasn't as fast as Lhasha at taking the ladder down. He hadn't practiced, as she had, and of course, his missing hand complicated matters even more. Each second he struggled was another second lost, another second the poison could spread through Lhasha's body.
With the ladder stashed inside, Corin quickly slipped Lhasha's carrying pack onto his back, then hauled her still unconscious form up onto his shoulder again. It was awkward crawling along the rafters with Lhasha draped across his back, but somehow Corin managed. He lifted her through the chimney vent, then pulled himself up after her.
On the roof he scrambled to reassemble the ladder, then used it to climb down to the streets of the Caravan district below, Lhasha still dangling from the now aching shoulder of his bad arm. At the bottom Corin gratefully shifted her weight to his left side, and set off at a running trot toward Gond's Church, leaving Fendel's collapsible ladder behind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Corin's