The Seal of Karga Kul_ A Dungeons & Dragons Novel - Alex Irvine [37]
“That won’t be the last one,” he said. “We’re going to need to get out into the middle before too many more of them get up there.”
From stone to stone they leaped. The larger ones moved not at all at the impact of mortal foot, but landing on the smaller ones was precarious because they dipped and tilted from the fresh weight. Remy quickly discovered that the old bits of cloth and their stakes were a reliable guide to a safe passage using stones of sufficient size, and he thanked all of the gods—not just Pelor—for the life and work of the unknown traveler who had set them there. “Hold them here for a moment,” Keverel panted as they gained an especially large block set at an angle to the rest, so that anyone wishing to make the leap onto it had to land on one corner. Remy and Keverel waited for Kithri and Lucan to make the jump with them. Together the four held back five times that number of hobgoblins.
“Where do they all come from?” Kithri wondered aloud.
Lucan loosed an arrow at something only he had seen, back toward the lip of the gorge. “The halls of the dwarves that lived in the gorge, I’d guess. It was one of the places their ancestors lived after they drove the dwarves out.” He nocked and fired another arrow. “Cambion back there, too.”
“Still?” Kithri skipped off to one side for a better perspective.
“No, was,” Lucan said. “But don’t be surprised if there are more of them spotted in among the tieflings here.”
Behind them, Biri-Daar and Iriani were within fifty feet of the cambion magus. Landing after her most recent leap, the dragonborn faced the cambion magus and clashed her sword and shield together. “Make way and live, devil,” she said. “Or remain and die. It’s all the same to me.”
The cambion spread his arms in a welcoming gesture. “After the battle,” he said, “I will find your head at the bottom of the gorge. I will place it next to my hearth and I will make it speak those words again and again.”
Hellfire arced between the magus’s hands. Iriani landed alongside Biri-Daar on the first stone of the bridge as flames curled out of Biri-Daar’s nostrils. The thrill of battle burned through her. With an enemy before her, she knew who she was. Together they strode to the next gap and cleared it in a long step. They paused, waiting for the stone under their feet to stop rocking. Three stones remained between them and the cambion.
“Quickly there!” Lucan called over his shoulder. Crossbow bolts were beginning to fall around them as the tieflings found the range. They were forced to give up their position, which meant giving up that entire block all at once; the moment they stepped back, hobgoblins leaped across and pursued them to the next gap. It turned into a sprint punctuated by reckless leaps across greater and greater gaps. Kithri slowed their pursuers down somewhat with a scattering of caltrops in their wake. A half-dozen hobgoblins pulled up with punctured feet, bogging down those that came behind until they were shoved out of the way.
That gained them a full stone of distance, with two gaps. They turned and poured arrows, sling stones, and throwing knives into the front rank of their pursuers, slowing but not stopping them.
Then out of the caves that lined the gorge, where once the tieflings of Bael Turath had undermined the great bridge, came the black wafting shapes of sorrowsworn.
“I was afraid of this,” Iriani said. He and Biri-Daar were two jumps from the cambion magus. He had spent the trip drenching the two of them in every protective magic he could think of while they said their prayers to Corellon and Bahamut that the devil’s Abyssal magics would not overcome them.
Now the sorrowsworn—three of them, surrounded by the flickering midnight torrent of what could only be shadowravens—meant that he was going to have to divide his attentions.