Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [85]
He dropped just as the guard below raised his crossbow to his shoulder and let the bolt fly. The missile spanged off the stone where his back had been just an instant before. Geth squeezed his hands tight again and jerked to a stop. There were loud grunts and curses from above as the sudden force yanked the guards pulling on the rope off balance. Geth sucked in a rasping breath. The tail of the rope pressed against his belly.
Only about fifteen paces below, the guard with the crossbow was rearming his weapon. The other guard stood beside him, hand on the hilt of his sword, waiting for his own chance.
Geth reached inside himself and shifted. The familiar feeling of invincibility burned through his veins. The pain in his ropeburned hand and his aching shoulder seemed to grow distant, then to vanish altogether. His skin felt like hide, his hair like thick, coarse bristles.
And he pushed himself further, pouring everything he had into the shifting. Hide, hair, flesh, bone—he was as hard and dense as the heaviest oak. Wild power flooded him and thought vanished. This was how a charging bear or a rampaging boar felt. Geth drew in his legs, pressed himself against the wall, and kicked out with all his strength, roaring as he unleashed the coiled power.
He let go of the rope just before it snapped taut. The plaza rushed up at him. So did the guards. He had the briefest glimpse of two terrified faces and of a crossbow snapped up toward him.
Black pain stole his sight, but there was no blocking out the sounds that came with the moment of impact. The clash of metal on metal. The hollow thump of flesh on stone. Moist crunches and wet tearings. A cry that ended in bubbling gurgles.
Light returned like thunder, and with it came the urge to vomit. Geth held down his gorge. He felt numb, almost separated from his body. He lay on his side, stone under his cheek. He sat up slowly—or tried to. His left arm buckled when he tried to put weight on it. He looked at it and saw an unnatural bend between wrist and elbow. He rolled over instead, felt a burst of pain in his side, ignored it, and pushed himself up with a right arm that wouldn’t bend properly but at least wasn’t broken.
Khaar Mbar’ost towered over him, an angry giant. By Geth’s legs lay the guards. Both looked as if the fortress-giant had raised a hand and swatted them like flies. Both were sprawled with the joints of their limbs at odd angles. One lay still and silent, his skull broken against the stones of the plaza, while the other twitched and gurgled, his rib cage crushed.
A few dar stood around, not too close, staring at them and at him. Geth looked up to the rope, still swaying against the wall, and the distant window of his chamber. The red-brown faces of hobgoblins gaped at him for a moment, then pulled back and vanished.
Daavn and his guards were coming. Geth stood, slowly and carefully, the worst of the pain kept at bay by the shifting, though he no longer felt invincible. Left arm broken. Right arm bent—his gauntlet was dented and locked. Pain in his side—broken ribs. Something ground against his left hip—the final bolt from the crossbow, deeply embedded. Wrath still hung at his side, through one of the leather loops fastening scabbard to belt had been torn free. He suspected that later he’d find an imprint of the sword’s length stamped into the flesh of his leg. His right knee pulsed with every step. One side of his face felt strangely soft, and his head was buzzing. He could feel a loose tooth wobbling in his mouth.
The staring dar jumped away as he turned, putting his back to Khaar Mbar’ost. The fortress Haruuc had built was no haven for him anymore. The maze of Rhukaan Draal lay before him. Limping and weaving, he fled for it. Ramshackle buildings swallowed him up, a mob concealing him from the gaze of the giant behind him.
When the grinding of the crossbow bolt in his hip threatened to stop his flight, he found a niche and thrust himself into it. Clenching his teeth tight, he wrenched the crossbow bolt out of his leg and pressed his left