The Sea Devil's Eye - Mel Odom [116]
Jherek glanced at the mage, already willing the bracer into a shield again.
"Pray to your gods, whelp," Iakhovas said in a cold, hard voice, "that you never meet me again."
Jherek wasn't planning on it, but he didn't say anything. He also didn't break eye contact. If any of his friends had been hurt, it would have been a different matter.
Iakhovas turned, gestured, then walked into what appeared to be a solid wall, the elf woman at his heels.
When the mage had gone, Jherek left Vurgrom with one of Tarnar's men holding a sword to his throat. Tarnar's sailors flooded into the cave. Their captain cowed, the surviving members of Vurgrom's pirates surrendered easily enough.
Jherek sprinted to the pool where koalinth battled his friends, Tarnar at his heels. Two of the creatures lay dead, silent testimony to Glawinn's skill. The paladin was on the floor, his sword locked against a koalinth's spear and his shield holding the creature's savage jaws from his face.
Changing the shield back to a hook, Jherek hooked the koalinth's shoulder from behind and yanked the monster off the paladin. The young sailor kicked the sea hobgoblin in the face, driving it back into the pool. He offered the paladin a hand up.
"Hail and well met, young warrior," Glawinn greeted him in a strained voice.
"Hail and well met," Jherek replied.
"The helping hand was appreciated," the paladin said with a crooked smile, "but I'd just gotten him where I wanted him."
Glawinn's sword flashed, engaging another koalinth's trident. He shoved the tines aside, then slid back through and slashed across the creature's stomach, mortally wounding it.
Jherek shifted the hook back to a bracer and swung his arm out to slap aside another koalinth's spear. The young sailor chopped the cutlass into the koalinth's neck, nearly beheading it. He stepped around the falling corpse, moving toward Sabyna.
When he saw hen the copper tresses framing her face, Jherek felt as though he'd been hit in the heart with Vurgrom's great hammer. Eighty-three days they'd been apart, and not one of them had passed that he didn't think of her with both longing and trepidation.
Now she was there before him, bent over in a knife-fighters stance, a blade in each hand, battling for her life against a koalinth. The creature struck with its spear but Sabyna turned it to one side and darted in to score a wound on her attacker's arm. The wound wasn't life threatening, but it bled heavily.
The koalinth howled in pain, then shoved its head open, the massive jaws aiming to bite her head.
Jherek thrust the cutlass forward, not willing to attack the creature from behind. The blade settled between the creature's jaws and it snapped its fangs on steel instead of flesh.
"Lady," Jherek said softly as the koalinth withdrew, "I am here."
Sabyna glanced at him and said, "You're alive."
"Aye."
Jherek stepped between her and the koalinth as another joined it. Despite the stench of wet leather, the closed-in stink of the cave, and the smell of blood, he caught the scent of the lilac fragrance she wore. Just one breath steeled his arm in spite of the beating he'd taken and the fatigue of racing across five miles of rugged terrain to reach the cave. He felt calm and centered.
"I thought you were dead," Sabyna said.
Jherek batted away a spear thrust, riposting and slicing the koalinth on the forehead so that blood ran down into its eyes.
"As I feared you might be before I returned," he told her.
"I wasn't sure you cared about that-even cared enough to come back from wherever you'd gone."
Her words hurt Jherek more grievously than any wound he'd received. He grabbed the next spear thrust in his free hand, held the haft, and stepped forward to pierce the koalinth's breast with the cutlass.
He yanked his blade free and turned to her, full of anger and pain. He kept his words as calm as he could, not understanding how she could doubt him.
"Please, lady," he said, "I have told