Cry of the Ghost Wolf: Neverwinter NiChosen of Nendawen, Book III (3 page)

Hweilan slammed the flat of her hand on the bars over their head. The action made the lights flash before her eyes again. But the bars didn’t budge in the slightest.

“You think we didn’t try that already?” said Jaden.

She glared down at him, but he only shrugged and looked away.

“Please, Hweilan,” said Darric.

She shifted her glare to him. “Please
what?
”

Darric flinched and looked to Valsun, then back at her. “Are you hurt?”

“Do I look hurt?” She took two paces to the left where the bars met the stone wall and hit it with her palm. Nothing. The metal scarcely even rattled. Not pretty, but as solid and as well made as she’d ever seen.

Hweilan braced her feet, then reached up, grabbed the middle-most section of the bars with both hands, and pushed as hard as she could. The pain in her joints and muscles flared so that it felt like hot needles were working their way through her flesh, but she clenched her jaw and pushed more. The bars didn’t move in the slightest.

“Hweilan, it’s no use,” said Darric. “Please—”

“There has to be a door or a hinge. How in the Hells did they get us in here?”

“Dropped us,” said Jaden. “My arse can still feel it.”

“The bars,” said Darric, “slid into place—out of the rock—after we were down here.”

“Slid?” said Hweilan. “Slid how?”

“Like a portcullis, I’d guess. Only sideways.”

Hweilan grabbed the bars again and tried to force them to slide, first one way and then the other. Nothing.

“Please, Hweilan. We
did
try that already.”

She gave up and screamed a long chain of curses in every language she knew.

“Such language!” said a voice from above.

They all looked up.

C
HAPTER
TWO

S
ILHOUETTED AGAINST THE GRAY SKY, FOUR FIGURES
looked down into the hole. The smallest had wispy hair in such disarray that it formed a sort of crazed halo. Maaqua. Hweilan still couldn’t recall the fight that had led her to this damned hole. But she remembered meeting the hobgoblin queen on the mountain, the fight when the demon wearing her mother’s body had attacked them, the hobgoblin champion Rhan hacking off her mother’s head …

All that was clear. After that, there was only the dream of the wolves.

Hweilan looked up and saw that Maaqua held her staff in one hand and leaned on a much larger figure next to her. The hilt of a massive sword peeked over his shoulder. That would be Rhan. With them were more hobgoblins, wearing helmets and holding spears. Guards. Which told Hweilan two things: they were prisoners, but Maaqua still felt the need for guards. That was good.

Maaqua called down, “For the Chosen of Nendawen and the granddaughter of the High Warden, you have quite a tongue on you. Dear pious Vandalar would be most ashamed.”

Hweilan glared up through the bars. “You’re making a grave mistake holding me here.”

“Is that so?”

“What day is it, Maaqua?”

“Eh?”

“More to the point, what
night
will it be? How long until the moon is full?”

Maaqua said nothing, and Hweilan let the question hang a while.

“You know who I am,” said Hweilan. “And you know
what
I am. The next full moon, do you really think my master will look kindly on anyone keeping me in a hole?”

Maaqua hunched her shoulders, almost as if she were hugging herself, and trembled. Hweilan thought she might be laughing, though she could hear nothing beyond the breathing of her companions, made eerily loud by the confines of the rock walls.

“I like you, girl,” said Maaqua. “You have teeth. I’m sorry we never met before things went bad.”

Hweilan gave the old crone her best glare and hoped there was enough light for it to be seen. “Things can always get worse,” she said.

Maaqua did laugh then, throwing back her head back and baying, almost like a hound. It ended in a wheeze that broke into a cough, and she said, “That’s why I’m here. You and I, we must speak.”

“Come down and we’ll have quite a conversation.”

“Don’t let my liking for you lead you to think that gives you leave to threaten me, girl,” said Maaqua. “You listen to old Maaqua. We can talk now. No more demons apparating on my doorstep. While you were sleeping down in that hole, I raised such a forbiddance around the fortress that Ao himself might have trouble peeking. I’m going to get you—and only you—out. The others will stay put for now. Any foolishness from you—anything at all!—and my guards will pull a lever up here. That lever will open a little floodgate. Once it’s opened, this hole will fill up with water. Not to the rim. No, I designed it too well. It’ll stop less than a foot over those bars. Your friends will be able to reach their hands into the air and see the sky even as they drown.”

Maaqua let that sink in.

Darric, Valsun, and Jaden all exchanged a worried glance.

“Do we understand each other?” said Maaqua.

Hweilan called up, “We do.”

The hobgoblins’ silhouettes backed out of sight.

“Is it me,” said Jaden, “or did that sound less than sincere?”

“Be silent, Jaden!” said Darric.

There was a wrenching sound, metal grinding on stone, and then the bars over their heads moved slowly into one side of the wall. A rope appeared overhead, hanging in the air a moment before falling down the length of the shaft to land on the ground between Hweilan and Jaden. It was thick and hairy, and sported a knotted loop on one end.

“Put the loop under your arms,” Maaqua called down. “Then walk up the wall, and we’ll pull from up here.”

Hweilan fitted her arms through the loop and grabbed the thick knot with one hand. She ran the other over the front of her shirt, just below her breasts. It was still there. Something stiff and unyielding, ending in a point. Good.

“Ready!” she called, then looked sidelong at Darric and whispered, “Be ready.”

The slack in the rope pulled taut, and Hweilan began her ascent up the stone wall.

“You heard what she said, Hweilan!” said Darric.

Hweilan said nothing, but kept looking up.

“Told you,” said Jaden. “Drowning … Could be worse, I suppose. Maybe the water’ll be warm.”

Valsun said, “Be
silent
, Jaden.”

The rope dug into Hweilan’s sides and back, scraping her skin even through her thick clothing, and the unnatural position of walking up the wall made her sore muscles scream for relief. She ground her jaw and took measured breaths through her nose to get through the pain. One of Ashiin’s lessons learned well: pain couldn’t be banished, but it could be focused, so
use
it. Hweilan knew she’d have one chance at this. The bars were still open below her. Good. This might just work.

Looking up, she saw that no one was watching. One hand still grasping the rope, she reached into her shirt with her
other, found the braided leather thong, and pulled. She felt the point scrape against her skin, perhaps even drawing fresh blood as she drew it out, but it was no worse than the pain she was already feeling.

She thanked her gods and ancestors that the goblins hadn’t taken the
kishkoman
from her. If they’d found it, they’d probably thought it no more than a trinket or piece of jewelry, much like the bits of bone and stone they themselves wore. There was certainly no magic in it. Quickly, she pulled off the necklace, wound the leather around her free wrist, and palmed the sharpened antler tip. Below, she heard a sharp whisper from Darric that sounded much like a curse.

Another four steps and she could see over the edge of the pit. Rhan stood only a couple of paces beyond the edge, pulling the rope hand over hand, his breath making a great cloud around him. Despite the cold, he was bare to the waist, except for the belt of his scabbard that rode his back, and his own breath had coated his skin in a thin sheen of frost.

Maaqua was pacing beyond her champion, and half a dozen guards watched the proceedings. Some leaned on their spears. No problem there. Another hobgoblin, whose scars and facepaint marked him as a soldier of rank, had a sword belted at his waist and a wicked-looking axe dangling from one hand. No real problem there, either. Not for what she had planned. But two others, standing on the lowest bit of the rise that led up a small escarpment to the heights overhead, were holding bows. The weapons lay lax in their hands, but each hobgoblin had an arrow nocked to the string and was watching Hweilan carefully. She’d have to make this quick.

Hweilan came out of the hole with a final pull from Rhan. She feigned overbalancing, let out a small gasp of pain—genuine but exaggerated—and stumbled toward the massive hobgoblin. He cast down the lank of rope and reached for her.

She twisted under his hands and brought her leg around in a hard kick, planting the top of her foot in the side of Rhan’s knee. He tensed at the last moment, and she didn’t hear the hoped-for crunch of bone, but the leg buckled and he fell
forward. Her other foot came up as he came down, and her heel came up straight into his belly. It felt like kicking a tree, but his breath shot out of him in a great cloud of steam. She used his own massive weight and momentum against him, using her leg as a lever and sending him arse over head into the pit. The Damarans screamed, Jaden loudest of them all.

But the brute had proved even heavier than he looked, and whatever Maaqua had done to Hweilan must’ve taken more of a toll than she’d first thought. She’d hoped to be on her feet and moving again before the two archers managed to pull feathers to cheek, but when she tried to push herself up, her right leg gave out and she stumbled.

Maaqua screamed, “Stop this, idiot girl!”

The hobgoblin of rank rushed forward, raising his axe and reaching for his sword. The others lowered their spears and charged. Behind her, the Damarans were still screaming down in the hole.

Hweilan kept her eyes fixed on Maaqua as she renewed her charge, but from the edge of her vision she saw the archers aiming. No help for it. She dodged slightly to the left to put Maaqua in between her and one of the archers.

She heard the
thwut
of a bowstring being released. Something slammed into her right arm, just below the shoulder, hard enough to knock her off her stride. But she kept going.

Maaqua raised her staff, her other hand already twirling the preparation of a spell. “Fool! I’ll—!”

And then Hweilan leaped. Despite her pain—Ashiin’s training had hardened her muscles, and she also suspected Nendawen’s blood had changed her in other ways—that one jump cleared the distance between Hweilan and the old hobgoblin while the nearest soldier was still yards away. Hweilan tackled Maaqua and rolled. She heard a
snap
and fresh pain shot up her arm, going all the way to the roots of her scalp. Her vision blurred for a moment, but when she came up, she had one arm tight around the old hobgoblin’s torso and the other held the point of her whistle knife at Maaqua’s
temple, just behind her right eye. Maaqua’s staff lay in the dirt just behind Hweilan.

“Everyone back or she dies!” Hweilan shouted at the onrushing hobgoblins.

Maaqua stiffened under her grip but did not resist. “Do as she says.”

The guards obeyed, though they kept their weapons ready. The soldier with the scars of rank was only a couple of paces away, and he had both axe and sword in hand now. The archers held their bows taut, the points of their arrows aimed in her direction. But Hweilan knew they’d have to be fools to risk it with their queen in the way.

“Back up!” Hweilan ordered the hobgoblin officer.

He looked to Maaqua.

“Do it,” said the old crone.

He backed up three steps.

“More,” said Hweilan.

He took another three.

The Damarans were still shouting from the hole, but Hweilan could make out no words.

“Rhan!” Maaqua called out. “Rhan, do not kill them! Yet!”

Hweilan heard a smack that sounded very much like a fist striking flesh, then the screams stopped.

“You flood that hole, and your champion dies, too,” Hweilan told Maaqua.

Maaqua chuckled. “Clever girl.”

Hweilan risked a quick glance down at her right arm. Just as she’d feared. The hobgoblin’s arrow had hit her in the arm, and she knew it had gone at least to the bone, perhaps even cracking it and lodging inside. It hurt like damnation. Her tackle of Maaqua had broken the shaft just over an inch outside Hweilan’s shirt and caused it to tear enough of her flesh that she already had a thick clot of blood freezing on her sleeve. She could feel a warm trickle running off her elbow.

“Where’s my wolf?” she asked.

“Wolf?”

“You know who I mean.”

“He’s behaving himself,” said Maaqua, “which is more than I can say for you.”

“And Mandan? The big Damaran with the club?”

“We have other plans for him.”

“Not anymore,” said Hweilan, and pressed the point of the bone until it dimpled the old hobgoblin’s flesh. “Your soldiers are going to put down their weapons and get those three halfwits out of the hole. Your champion can stay for a while. Then you’re going to have Mandan and my wolf brought to us. And then we’re all going to leave. Once we’re safely away, I’ll let you go.”