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The thin cord sang with tension as it raced around his gauntlet and the shutter creaked, but both held. His unprotected left hand burned, skin rubbed away by the rope, but when he swung back toward the wall of Khaar Mbar’ost, he’d dropped almost a full floor.

“No, alive!” came Daavn’s voice from above. “Tariic wants him alive!”

Geth looked up to see the flash of light on polished blade as a sword was drawn away from the rope. A chill passed through him—he’d planned the same fate for Chetiin. He started lowering himself as fast as he could, hand under hand under hand. The movement bumped him back and forth against the hard wall of Khaar Mbar’ost. The thin rope swung and lashed below him with every motion. He hooked it with his foot, twisting it around his leg in an effort to keep it steady. The ground approached at a snail’s crawl, those few people who had not deserted the plaza below after Chetiin’s descent staring up at him.

Then the rope jerked with such force that it almost pulled his arm out of his socket. He shouted as pain lanced through his shoulder and chest. His burned hand jumped free of the rope. The grip of his good hand failed. He dropped and the rope screeched as it slid around the metal of his gauntlet—and stopped short with another jerk as the rope twisted around his leg and closed tight on his flesh. For a long, long moment, Geth dangled above the plaza. He shivered uncontrollably, watching the stones of the plaza twenty paces below spin in his vision.

The rope jerked again. With a yelp, he closed his metal-clad fingers on it in a hold tighter than the Keeper’s. His other hand joined it, pain forgotten in fear. He held very still.

And yet the wall in front of his nose was still moving past him—in the wrong direction. Geth craned his head back. Hands were on the rope where it emerged from the window of his chamber. Daavn and the guards were hauling him back up! An armslength of wall slid past in fits and stops, then he felt the pull grow steadier and stronger. Another guard had joined in.

With eight guards heaving at the rope, it would be like drawing up a fish hooked on a line.

Heart trembling, he kicked at the twist that had saved him, loosening it so that he could descend again. He forced his right hand to open, shake the loop from around his gauntlet, and move below his left, then his left to move below the right. The surface of the rope was stained red where his left hand gripped it. He was moving again—but not for long. Climbing as fast as his shaking body would allow, he was still only barely holding position against the hobgoblins pulling him up. And he was running out of rope. A knot-weighted tail that had dangled no more than the height of a tall man above the plaza was now nearly ten paces up and rising fast.

Geth scanned the walls for windows, but for all that Khaar Mbar’ost might have been a palace at the heart of a busy city, it was still a fortress. Only the upper floors had windows worthy of the name. The lower floors were largely featureless except for narrow slits for light and defense. They offered no hope at all of escape. If he waited for the guards to pull him up higher, maybe he could swing to an upper window and make his way back into—

Shouts from below caught his attention and he looked down again. Two guards had appeared, attracted by the commotion. No. Three guards. One was running off, probably to find support. One of the others was dragging at the crossbow slung across his back. Geth’s heart jumped.

“No!” Daavn shouted from above. “The lhesh wants him alive. Hold your bolt! Hold your bolt!”

Even Geth heard only half the warlord’s words clearly. To the hobgoblins on the ground, he would have been all but unintelligible. The guard with the crossbow planted the nose of the weapon on the ground, held it with a foot, and hauled up on the cord, trying to draw it into position.

“Bear and Boar,” breathed Geth. He was out of time. He couldn’t go up, he couldn’t go to the side, and certainly couldn’t stay where he was. He looked down at the knotted tail of the rope and