James Wyatt - In the Claws of the Tiger

“I’ll do it my way,” he said, and cast a quick spell. Looking up at Janik, he started to float upward. At the top, Janik reached out and pulled him over to stand on the wall, laughing quietly.

“I don’t think there’s room for you to get past me,” he said to Mathas.

Janik backed into the gap, making enough room for Mathas and Auftane, who was walking up the wall, pulling himself along with the rope. Dania held the rope at the bottom to keep him from swinging. Mathas tried to help Auftane clamber up over the edge, almost causing them both to tumble back down onto Dania.

Dania came up last, pulling herself quickly hand over hand and easily finding her feet on the top of the wall. She pulled the rope up behind her and handed it to Auftane, who passed it to Janik. Janik led the way through the gap and pulled the knot free from the crack where he had wedged it.

“Uh-oh,” he said, ducking his head to the side just as an arrow whizzed past his ear. Mathas cursed in pain behind him. Janik pulled his head farther into the gap while searching the ground below for the source of the arrow.

Mathas spotted the rakshasa first, ignoring the arrow’s cut and sending a blast of magical fire to engulf a figure crouching in the shadows below them. The zakya roared and loosed another arrow, which clattered harmlessly off the stone block behind Mathas.

“Well, I’m no use up here,” Janik muttered. He dropped the rope behind him and jumped to the ground, landing on his feet and running over to the zakya. It dropped its bow and pulled out a heavy, toothed sword. Too late, Janik remembered how the other fiends had resisted the bite of his blade, and he wished he had been less impulsive.

The zakya’s fur was partly burned away by Mathas’s fiery blast, and Janik saw pink, blistered flesh beneath it. He could see the pain in its eyes, but its mouth was twisted into something like a snarling grin as it anticipated cutting into Janik with its sword.

Good, Janik thought, it expects me to be easy.

The fiend led with a sweeping blow that would have knocked Janik flat on his back while it opened a gash in his belly-if Janik had been in its path. He tumbled down and to his right, staying ahead of the blade and enticing his foe to extend the swing, reaching too far out. Planting his feet at the end of his roll, Janik hurled his whole body at the zakya, leading with the point of his sword. The blade entered the fiend’s body below its arm and bit deeply despite the creature’s preternatural toughness. Janik ended his roll facing the wall, where Mathas was floating to the ground, and he saw Auftane fumbling with the rope to get himself safely down.

The fiend wheeled to face Janik and adopted a more cautious stance, holding a blood-drenched hand to the wound beneath its sword arm and snarling in anger.

“Janik, watch out!”

Janik was barely conscious of Mathas’s shouted warning, but instinctively dodged to the side just as another rakshasa’s blade swung down where his head had been. In the same instant that Janik dodged, a massive bolt of crackling lightning stretched from the elf’s fingertips to engulf both fiends. The one in front of him fell, tiny arcs of lightning flaring in its fur. The second fiend roared and charged past Janik toward Mathas, beginning to raise its sword for a deadly blow.

“Ignore me, will you?” Janik muttered. As the zakya passed him, his sword darted out and sliced into the fiend’s leg, sending it sprawling on its face on the dusty earth. Janik sprang forward to kill it before it could rise, but it rolled over and slammed its shield into Janik, knocking him aside. He tried to roll with the blow and come up on his feet, but the blow had upset his balance and he joined the rakshasa sprawled in the dust, staring up at the sky.

The fiend didn’t bother trying to get to its feet. It used the momentum of its roll to carry itself to where Janik lay. It planted its sword hand on Janik’s shoulder to pin him to the ground, and lifted its shield so its sharpened edge was positioned right over Janik’s neck.

The fiend paused for only a heartbeat. Janik saw its feline mouth curve into a wicked smile and the muscles of its shoulder tense to drive the shield down.

Something hit the rakshasa like a stone from a catapult, knocking it off Janik completely. Janik leaped to his feet and saw Dania on the ground, tangled with the fiend, which looked more like a fierce tiger locked in a death struggle than a warrior in armor. It roared as it tried to roll Dania onto her back, and it ignored its weapons in favor of trying to bite her neck.

Janik took a deep breath as he picked up his sword from the ground, trying to calm his pounding heart. He moved as fast as he could to the zakya and Dania, but he felt like he was running in a dream, as if his feet were mired in swampy ground.

“Get it off her, Janik!” Mathas was yelling. He was poised to cast a spell, but he didn’t want to risk catching Dania in the blast. Dania was struggling, but she seemed unwilling to loose her sword, even though she couldn’t possibly bring it to bear in such close quarters.

Janik reached them. With his left hand, he grabbed a fistful of the zakya’s fur and skin between its helmet and its armor, pulling with all his strength to draw its head back. It snarled and tried to twist its head around to bite his arm, then Janik drove his sword up under its chin.

Again he felt that his sword had grown blunt, that it couldn’t bite through the unnatural flesh. But it didn’t matter. Dania broke free of the zakya’s grasp, found her feet, and stepped backward, swinging her sword with all her strength. Her weapon hit the creature and erupted in a burst of silver flame, then cleaved through its neck as the flame seared its fur and flesh. Janik pulled his hand back from the flames in surprise, leaving his sword embedded in the zakya’s chin. The sword landed, impaled in the fiend’s severed head, at Janik’s feet. Its body slumped to the ground.

“Thanks for getting it off me,” Dania said.

“Thanks for keeping my head on me,” Janik replied. He bent to pull his sword free, and tested the point with his finger. “Auftane?” He looked around for the dwarf, finding him beside Mathas.

“Give me the sword,” Auftane said, anticipating Janik’s request. He took the blade and traced symbols on it as he had done before, then handed it back to Janik. “That ought to help.”

“Thank you.” Janik checked the point again out of habit, then slid the sword back into its sheath. “On second thought,” he said, pulling it out again, “I expect I’m going to need this again soon.”

“I can’t quite believe we’re not still fighting,” Dania said. “Those two certainly made enough noise to draw attention.”

“Well, we don’t know how many of these things are here,” Janik said. “The party that came after us was large, so maybe they didn’t leave many behind.”

“Sounds pretty optimistic,” Auftane observed.

“It’s a pleasant enough fantasy,” Janik said. “But it’s probably a trap.”

“Now that’s the Janik I know,” Dania said with a wry smile. “Where now?” Auftane asked.

“A place to talk about this that’s not out in the open,” Janik said. “It would have been good to come in here with a plan.”

“We were making our way toward a plan,” Dania said, “but they caught us off guard. Sneaking up on our camp in the middle of the night-honestly, they have no respect for the way things are supposed to be done.”

Janik laughed quietly and pointed to a heap of rubble nearby-evidently one of the efforts to rebuild the ruins. They moved quietly into its shadow and huddled together to plan their next steps.