Then Balasar and Khouryn rushed in on the firebelcher’s flank. Medrash’s clan brother spat frost at the creature. The dwarf chopped it with his urgrosh. The lizard spun in the direction of the attack, taking the pressure off Medrash for what felt like the first time in days. He wanted to retreat and catch his breath. He snarled Torm’s name and swung his sword instead.

“Do you… want us… to back off?” Balasar panted. “You seemed so… keen… to kill giants all by… yourself!”

“You can… have a piece of this thing,” Medrash answered.

“That’s… very generous.”

As the three of them fought on, circling in an effort to stay away from the firebelcher’s jaws, Medrash caught glimpses of the rest of the battle. Giants and dragonborn slashed, battered, and stabbed at one another. Piles and pits of ash churned as the adept tried to summon more reinforcements. But no more creatures burst or clambered into view-probably because Nala stood chanting with her shadow-wood staff sketching S curves in the air. Patrin stood protectively before her, his sword uplifted to kill whatever threatened her. Light shone through the red blood on the blade like sunbeams through stained glass.

Evidently Nala’s countermagic was holding the shaman’s power in check. That was useful, but Medrash couldn’t help wishing she’d started a little sooner. Because even with three warriors hacking at it, the firebelcher still wouldn’t drop.

Suddenly it heaved itself around in an arc, spewing fire as it spun. The jet washed over all three of them, but Balasar caught the worst of it, reeled, and fell. The firebelcher lunged at him. Medrash and Khouryn scrambled to intercept the beast and, striking furiously, held it back.

Risking a glance over his shoulder, Medrash saw Balasar coughing and stirring feebly. He was trying to get up but couldn’t manage it.

“We have to end this,” growled Khouryn, voice tight with the pain of his burns. “Can you keep its attention on you for a few moments?”

“Yes.” Medrash hurled himself at the lizard.

He struck and dodged repeatedly, evading the snapping, fiery fangs by inches, unable to retreat more than a step or two lest he leave Balasar exposed. Then suddenly, Khouryn appeared on the beast’s humped back. Medrash realized he must have run up its tail.

As he was still running, while avoiding the spikes jutting at intervals from the firebelcher’s spine, the lizard lunged at Medrash. Khouryn staggered and appeared on the brink of losing his balance, but then somehow recovered. He scrambled onward, grabbed one of the creature’s horns, and used it to anchor himself in place while he jabbed and scraped at its eyes with the spearhead on the haft of his urgrosh.

For a moment, the firebelcher didn’t seem to notice him. Then the spearhead skated across one of its eyes, and it shrieked and spewed flame straight at Medrash, most likely without even intending it. He caught the jet on his shield.

The firebelcher lashed its head back and forth, trying to shake Khouryn off. Most dragonborn would have lost their grips and gone flying, or else had their arms jerked out of their sockets. But the dwarf, though bounced from side to side, kept himself steady enough to go on fishing for an eye.

With everything shaking, he wasn’t able to gouge one out. But while he kept the firebelcher preoccupied, Medrash rushed in and thrust his sword point deep into the hollow where its neck jointed its body.

The red lizard froze, then shuddered. Seeming to topple with a dreamlike slowness, it flopped over onto its side. Khouryn jumped clear and landed with a clink of mail.

“Help Balasar,” gasped the dwarf. “I’ll keep watch.”

Medrash dropped to his knees beside his clan brother. Please, Torm, he thought, grant me just a little more of your grace. He rested his hand on Balasar’s shoulder, then felt power flow through the point of contact. New scales covered raw, seeping burns.

“That looks better,” Khouryn said, his voice sounding from behind Medrash’s back. If he could stand there and talk, it must mean the firebelcher really was dead, and that no other threats were advancing on them.

Balasar grinned up at the dwarf. “That was a good trick.” He wheezed. “Were you a ropewalker in a carnival, to keep your balance like that?”

“I’m a dwarf,” Khouryn answered. “We have low centers of gravity.”

Even with an invasion looming, Hasos couldn’t completely neglect the mundane business of the barony. On market day, that meant he had to sit in judgment on his dais in Whistler’s Square.

It wasn’t a permanent platform. Workers set it up in the morning and dismantled it again in the evening, and in recent years it had started to creak and quiver at odd moments.

Hasos tried to stop wondering if and when it might actually collapse, and at what cost to him in dignity and bruises. Tried to focus instead on the two peasants squabbling over where one’s farm ended and the other’s began.

It was an effort, because he despised boundary disputes. In the wake of the Spellplague and the changes it wrought, his greatgrandfather had ordered the fief surveyed. That should have settled every conceivable conflict in advance. Yet somehow the glib and the greedy still found arguments to challenge the placement of markers, hedgerows, and fences.

“The stones have always marked the line,” said the farmer nervously twisting a soft, broad-brimmed hat in his hands.

“You dug them up and moved them!” said the plaintiff, an old fellow seemingly bedizened with every religious trinket he could lay his hands on, either to persuade the gods to favor him or to convince Hasos he was devout and thus, surely, honest. “Do you think people can’t see the fresh-turned dirt?”

“Has anyone else seen it?” Hasos asked. Or would he have to send someone to look?

The pious peasant hesitated. “Well… not exactly. The wife has bunions. She can’t-”

Hasos spotted a stirring at the back of the crowd of waiting disputants and spectators, and a flash of bright yellow clothing. He raised his hand to silence the plaintiff and craned for a better look at what was happening. Followed by a pair of her subordinates, Cera came bustling toward his platform.

His feelings for Cera were complicated. They’d been lovers for a season, and he’d liked her well enough to start considering whether a priestess of her rank could possibly make a suitable wife for a baron. Then she’d told him that as far as she was concerned, their affair had run its course.

It had probably saved him from making a foolish decision, but it still stung, and kept stinging at odd moments over the three years since. It was worse when he knew she was keeping company with another man, and had been particularly bad since she’d taken up with the very scoundrel-a soulless mage, no less!-who’d come to Soolabax to subvert his authority.

Yet there was a part of him that always craved her company, even when he felt most jealous and resentful-even when he expected it to hurt. And besides, whatever she wanted, it was bound to be more interesting than the trivia on the docket.

He rose and gave her the shallow bow appropriate to their stations. “Sunlady. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

“Milord.” Cera was a little out of breath, and her golden vestments hung slightly askew. “I realize others have been waiting for their turns, and I apologize for shoving in ahead of them. But the dignity of Amaunator demands immediate action!”

“What do you mean?” Hasos asked.

“You’re aware Captain Fezim is badly wounded.”

“Of course. It’s a pity. Although I did warn him that his forays into Threskel were reckless in the extreme.”

“I assume you know too that I’m tending him myself in the temple.”

Just kick me in the stones, why don’t you? Hasos thought. “Yes, I heard.”