5.

What an absurd, appalling day.

Take some initiative, his father was always saying, like the chorus in the tragedy that was Sir Hjortt's life, for the love of your ancestors, get off your doughy ass and take some initiative. And the one time he took that advice, the one fucking time, where did it get him? Right fucking here, apparently. Thanks, Dad.

Sir Hjortt straddled a painful fence, split between hatred at the probably deceased Brother Iqbal for neglecting to detect the old woman's witchcraft and good old-fashioned self-pity. The mayoress clearly had the aid of devils, for she'd dodged the knight's sword with the speed of a water weasel and then broken his arm with the strength of an ox. An angry one. The steel cop covering his elbow had actually popped loose from her barehanded assault, dangling as worthlessly as the arm it had failed to protect.

The knight had been in his fair share of scrapes-well, one or two, anyway-but the agony of his arm being snapped backward had beggared belief. By the time his mind had recovered from its shock the old witch had dragged him back inside her kitchen. His sole attempt at further resistance had resulted in her frogging him in the eye with a curled finger and then twisting his broken arm until he retched from the pain of it all. After that, he did as he was told and let her tie him to a chair with the coil of thick cord she had scared up. The most that could be said for his situation was that he barely registered his headache anymore.

Now she was stomping around upstairs and Sir Hjortt's thoughts were beginning to crawl back toward rationality-she had undone both Iqbal and himself, doubtless with some fell sorcery, and now he was her prisoner. Even if Sister Portoles came straight back after giving the order to purge the town, it was a long walk up the hill. He might be alone with the old woman for a while, and had best ensure she knew what a healthy ransom he would command before she did anything regrettable. Well, anything more regrettable.

Footfalls on the stairs in the other room, and then she bustled back into the kitchen and deposited a pile of clothing onto the table. She paused, then picked up a linen shirt and draped it over her husband's head, covering it and the scones. Next she pulled her dirndl over her head, and then her blouse. Although she didn't seem to possess an extra breast on which her familiars might suckle or any other witchly deformities, her inexplicable stripping sat poorly with her captive.

Her head snapped in his direction, and Sir Hjortt realized with horror that he must have inadvertently made his displeasure known with a groan or something. He tried to play it off, lolling his head and staring down at his broken arm as he moaned. She walked over and backhanded him across the cheek, which was entirely uncalled for and flew in the face of all acceptable conduct regarding noble prisoners of war. He knew because he'd memorized those passages of the Crimson Codices, lest he ever find it necessary to surrender rather than die an easily avoided death on some random battlefield.

"You should have let me speak," she said, putting her face right in his, her breath stinking like that awful tea. "Instead of sending your Chainwitch down to murder my people, you should have let me have my say. You'd be counting coins right now. A lot of them. I'd follow you and kill you, of course, for what you did to Leib, but I'd have given you a few weeks to put this place behind you, lest anyone suspect the motive and return to Kypck. You might have enjoyed those extra days of easy living."

"This 'Leib' is your husband." Sir Hjortt frowned, his face stinging from her blow. "Kypck's your town."

"Leib was my husband, before you killed him. Kypck was my town, before you killed it, too. If you're not on a battlefield, you should learn the names of those you slaughter, if only to taunt any vengeful pursuers."

"From his first breath to his last, the wise general never leaves the battlefield," said Sir Hjortt sagely. "Only thus is peace won."

"Ugh," said the witch, wrinkling her nose. "They're still hammering Lord Bleak's Ironfist into the Crimson command? No wonder you're such a shameless bastard, swallowing that fascist dog shit."

"You've read it?" said Sir Hjortt, surprised.

" 'Poor strategies should be studied as well as wise ones, for generals shall adopt the former more oft than the latter.' You know who said that?" The naked old sorceress was still leaning over him, and as one of the waves of pain rolled back out to sea he realized she was actually waiting for a response. He shook his head. "Ji-un Park," she said.

"They no more taught us the tactics of Immaculates than they did the stratagems of squirrels," said Sir Hjortt. "But I think it's high time we talked ransom, my lady, as-"

"My lady, is it?" She snorted. "You'd have been better off studying the squirrels than Lord Bleak-they have the sense to stay away from beehives, even if they are full of honey."

"I... uh." Sir Hjortt felt the heat spread from his broken arm up to his cheeks at the lewd way the matron breathed the words in his face, and he looked away from her nakedness. By all the devils and deacons of the Burnished Chain, what was she going to do, cast a spell?

Instead of ensorcelling him, the woman turned away and went back to the clothes piled on the table. After fishing out a tan pair of trousers, she squeezed into them with a grunt and then fixed a leather... thing across her bosom. Over that went a shirt or tunic or something-the knight had stopped paying attention in order to try and wriggle his ankles free, get some options going... but when she'd tied his legs to the chair she'd been thorough, and he couldn't do more than impotently squirm in his seat.

She left the room, banged around the rest of the house, and then came back into the kitchen with a stout, one-handed war hammer and an unstrung bow. Setting these on the clothes pile, she disappeared again. Sir Hjortt stared at the hammer nervously. She returned with an already bulging backpack and set to wrestling the remaining clothes into it, save for the shirt covering her husband's head.

"My lady," he said, but she ignored him, and so he tried again. It was like reasoning with his father, only worse. He hadn't thought such a thing was possible, prior to this moment. "Madame Mayoress, if I might-"

"You might shut your mouth before I decide to cut out your tongue-you could choke to death on your own blood. For all I know your Sister Portoles is halfway up the hill, and I don't intend to be here when she finds the remains of your other pet witch."

"You're the only witch here," said Sir Hjortt, although now that she mentioned it he wondered if Portoles had somehow sensed it when Iqbal died, if she was even now racing up the trail to-shit on fire, the hag was messing with his broken arm again!

"You can't know how much I hate being called that," she said, running her hand down his agonized arm, then holding up a sinew bowstring for his inspection. "But you'll find out soon enough how it feels for fools to think you're something other than what you are, for them to attribute your accomplishments to witchcraft. They'll call you a sorcerer, do you know that?"

"What are you... don't!" Sir Hjortt felt his numb thumb in her bony fingers, then the bowstring dug sharply into the base of the digit. A tear formed in the eye that wasn't swollen shut as his thumb immediately began to sing louder than its broken arm.

"They'll be wrong, of course, but it won't change things-Colonel Hjortt of Azgaroth: demonologist. Or maybe diabolist, it amounts to the same thing. Colonel Hjortt, summoner of devils best left in hell. Not bad for a young prat of a noble, eh?"

"This isn't my fault," Sir Hjortt blathered over his shoulder. "I'm a decent man, I didn't want to go into the army, I wouldn't, I'm not a bad sort, I just... just..."

"Did as you were told?" She paused in her work, her voice low. "Carried out the orders you were given?"

"Yes, exactly!" said Sir Hjortt, eager to tell her whatever she wanted to hear, anything to make her stop. "Orders! Not my idea! Never!"

"You certainly seemed reluctant to carry them out," she said, her voice hardening as she looped the bowstring around the base of his other thumb, the one on his good arm, and pulled it tight. As she deftly tied it off in a knot, an immediate, awful throbbing filled both thumbs, as though they had been stung by something highly poisonous. She stood, went to the cooling kettle, and picked up a kitchen knife she had been warming beside it on the woodstove.

"Please," Sir Hjortt gasped, his skull pounding in tandem with his arm and, worst of all, his thumbs. He tried to stay calm, but she'd tied them so tight the sensation would have been unbearable even if he hadn't guessed what she intended. "Please, there's no cause for-"

"No cause?" said the witch, coming back to him. Fallen Mother save him, the black blade of the knife in her hand was actually smoking. "We both know the punishment for theft in your homeland, don't we, Colonel? You've stolen my husband from me, you've stolen my friends, my family, so this should hardly come as a surprise. The tourniquets will keep you from bleeding too much."

"Please, I didn't have a choice, I-" But then the witch crouched behind his chair, and though he thrashed in his seat, she made short work of it. The pressure in the thumb of his broken arm was released first, and then, more palpably, he felt his other thumb sawed through in several brisk strokes. The bone gave her trouble, though, and he shrieked as she snapped it off. When he was again sensible of his surroundings, his tormentor was back in front of him, wiping the bloody knife clean on the vair collar of his cloak.

"You said you didn't have a choice," said the witch, sliding her unstrung bow into a scabbard on the side of her backpack and then shouldering it. "I believe you, boy-you're just a good little doggie doing what he's told, aren't you? An innocent lad, cursed with bad luck?"

"You evil, evil woman," Sir Hjortt whined, the fire where his thumbs had been now spreading through his hands. "I'm a colonel of the fucking Queen of Samoth! They'll find you, my father, Sister Portoles, the queen, the pope, they'll find you and-"

"And what, boy? And what?" She took the hammer off the table and advanced on him. "You don't know a devildamned thing about anything, do you? What could they do to me, eh? What could they take that you haven't already stolen?"

"You're dead!" Sir Hjortt knew he was being pathetic, that he was courting further punishment, but he couldn't stop himself. "You've fucking crippled me! How am I supposed to get on without my hands, you monster! It would be a mercy if you'd kill me instead!"

"Mercy. Now there's a devil I won't have any truck with, not from here until my dying day," she said, but she reached around and slipped the handle of her war hammer through a loop on the side of her backpack instead of using the weapon on Sir Hjortt. Then she went to the table, flipping the shirt off her husband's head. After a moment's pause, she picked the skull up by the hair and returned it to its satchel, which then went over a shoulder. It hung awkwardly against the backpack, and as she looked back at Sir Hjortt with those flashing blue eyes he knew what he should have from the very first-he was totally, utterly fucked.

"What can you do?" he said, his voice cracking. "What can you possibly do? Where can you go? They'll find you, they will, to make an example-"

"An example," said the witch, nodding. "That's what I'll do, make some examples. Now, let's take a look and see how the example you set for me is going."

She walked behind him, grabbing the back of his seat in both hands and dragging him out onto the deck. The legs of the chair screeched as he went. How could Iqbal have missed such obvious deviltry, a grey-haired gran capable of hauling around a fully armored knight? What was the point of keeping witchborn bodyguards if they couldn't even recognize their own wicked kind? It was hard to think anything so coherent, though, the pounding grief in his hands consuming everything, all the blood that should be flowing through them instead backing up into his brain, drowning his mind in a deluge of pain. It took some grunting and cursing, but she finally maneuvered the chair so that he could look out over the valley. There was a lot of smoke coming up, but he couldn't make out much else. The mocking aspens made him reel, and if he hadn't been tied in place he would have collapsed. Damn the Fallen Mother for her deafness.

"Don't worry, Colonel Hjortt," she said, still standing beside him. "If your weirdborn nun is half as clever as I expect, you'll be saved long before the fire spreads out here. And if not, well, hopefully the ropes will burn away first and you'll get off with a light charring. I know masks are quite fashionable in Azgaroth, especially Cockspar. They used to be, anyway."

He tried to speak, to beg, maybe, or threaten, but his tongue felt as heavy as brass.

"Before, you generously offered me the freedom to weep, should I need to," the madwoman breathed in Sir Hjortt's ear. "I think I'll wait, though. I'm not going to cry for all those honest, blameless people down there, much as I love some of them, much as I like most of the rest. I'm not even going to cry for my husband."

She tousled his hair, her lips now brushing his earlobe. "The only one I'm going to weep for, good knight, is you, and my tears will only fall after we've been reunited. That's right, boy, once every other individual responsible for this travesty has been dealt with, after every single one of them has been paid a visit, then I'll find you, wherever you go, wherever you hide, and I will deal with you at my leisure. Then, oh brave Hjortt of Azgaroth, Fifteenth Colonel of the Crimson Empire, then, when you've finally escaped my vengeance, either through madness or death, then I will weep, but only because I can no longer torment you."

"Holy shit," Sir Hjortt managed before the first sob wracked his gallant chest. From the pain, yes. And the shock of being made a cripple, certainly. Yet the true source of his misery, the thing that made him half hope that the fire she set in the house just before fleeing into the mountains would consume the deck he sat upon before Sister Portoles could rescue him, was one simple fact: he believed every word she said.

CHAPTER.

6.

Maroto sat atop the rim of the canyon, leaned his mace against a rock, and strapped his sandals back on. The sandstone felt warm against his bare legs with the bloody sun just peeking over the cracked plateau; in a few hours the rock he leaned against would be scalding to the touch. Even complemented by daybreak's bouquet of rose, hyacinth, and lilac, the Panteran Wastes looked even worse up here than they did in the labyrinth of ravines and gullies that cut through the desert. Down in the shadow roads there were cacti and twisted cedar, the infrequent spring surrounded by cattails and stunted willow, but nothing grew on these exposed plains and ridges save umber tufts of grass, ivory lichens, and blasted black rock formations. Maroto knew he could have found a worse place to lead his party, but doing so would have taken more work than he was willing to put in without extra pay.

Beneath him it was still too dark to see much. They had a cooking fire going, so he supposed the caravan had finished circling the wagons as best they could in the tight canyon-the gaudy convoy reminded him of an emperor centipede winding across the smoldering desert by night and then coiling up in some hole when dawn threatened. A cooking fire, in the Wastes! Maroto couldn't decide which was a greater marker of his party's absurd affluence: that they insisted on eating half a dozen hot meals a night, or that in between they snacked on sorbets and other frozen treats. Witch-powered or not, keeping the ice-wagon cool must cost a pretty princedom. Almost as much as the aquaricart, probably.

The money was good, though, so here he was. No, the money was great, princely, or else he never would have taken the gig. Repeat the mantra. As if money could ever be anything but devilish...

He really ought to start climbing back down before it got too hot, now that he had confirmed that the horizon was free of encroaching swarmclouds and the sky was clear of thunderheads, but he couldn't bear to return right away. He could (and indeed, had) slept through battles and coronations, orgies and sieges, but something about the shrill tittering of his charges kept him up long into the morning, every morning. Besides, scrambling out of the gorge as every other hold crumbled beneath his weight had given him a parched throat to go along with his raw fingers and toes, and climbing down was always far worse than coming up.

Most folk, his party included, watered down their cougar milk, but then most people, his party especially, were utterly, irredeemably weak. Knocking back his boozeskin, the draught burned like it ought to, few things restoring a man's perspective better than a pull on the licorice-sweet lava those Pertnessian alchemists cooked up. He fondly recalled a bar fight in Old Slair when a goon had swung on him with a lit torch and he'd used his flagon to breathe fire in the man's face. That he'd set his own dreadlocks alight in the process only lent the tale flavor-by all the forgotten gods of his heathen ancestors, what had he been thinking, twisting his hair into those ropes? Why not just fix a handle on your helm for people to grab hold of and sling you about...

The clattering of rocks bouncing down the ravine, and a grunt just beneath his heels. Somebody was coming up the cliff after him, and they were almost to the top. Of all the empty-skulled plays these lordlings had made, this had to be one of the worst. He'd allowed Sir Kuksi to accompany him up on their first morning out, and the ponce had slipped a mere twenty feet up the sandy slope, skinning his palms and twisting an ankle before landing in a heap of torn satin and silk at the bottom, to the jeers of his comrades. After that Maroto had made it abundantly clear: leave the scouting to the scout. Up until this juncture they had listened, but the brats were getting surlier by the night as crossing the Wastes revealed itself to be every bit as awful an ordeal as one ought to expect, given the name of the place. They claimed to want adventure, Lady Opeth going so far as to demand a giant scorpion to battle, yet they squealed like children when they found examples of the regular variety in their shoes after a hard night's day of drinking, drugging, and gambling 'round the campfire. It took all of his willpower not to grab one of those boot scorpions in his bare hand and let it sting him into blessed oblivion.

A soft and bloody palm slapped up, manicured fingers digging into the sandstone edge of the cliff, and Maroto darted forward. He grabbed the idiot's wrist before any further weight could be put onto the dangerous handhold, before he could put any thought into whether or not it might be better just to let this moron fall to their death and serve as an example to the rest. The noble cried out as Maroto hurled them up and over the lip of the cliff, the petite lordling dangling from one of his thick hands. It was Tapai Purna, because of course it was Purna.

Even after a week in the Wastes, Maroto had no idea if this particular fop identified as man, woman, or neither. The majority of the party came from the Serpent's Circle, and there in the old-and-then-new-and-then-old-again capital of the Crimson Empire they still used the obvious titles like Duke and Duchess, Zir and Sir, so getting a rough idea of how to address someone wasn't too hard. The Ugrakari honorific Tapai, on the other hand, could apply to anyone, and Maroto couldn't remember enough of his campaigns on that side of the Star to recall if the name Purna skewed in any particular direction. Among most of the coxcombs certain unavoidable physiological differences helped make things easy, but Purna Antimgran, Thirty-ninth Tapai of Ugrakar, was one of the exceptions. Despite looking about thirty years old, the noble didn't reveal enough in the chest or shoulders, arse or hips to give Maroto a solid clue. Tapai Purna may have hailed from a different homeland, but had adopted the Serpentine style of the rest of the nobles with gusto: an already androgynous, if handsome face was buried under lead foundation and cerulean lipstick, and the powdered wig only further befuddled matters. Purna's choice of fashion was as confounding as that of the others: the most popular attire, despite the climate, consisted of puffy lace collars, enormous ribbon bows, and layers and layers of embroidered shirts and vests tucked into frilly cream bloomers. These bloomers would have looked bad enough beneath one's clothes, but they were even worse when worn as an outer layer, Purna's admittedly shapely legs swathed in parti-colored hose and tipped with delicate, black-buckled shoes.

All of which were now scuffed or torn, stained and dripping, as Maroto set Purna down on the jagged ridgeline. Harlequin tears spattered the stone as sweat excavated gullies in the fop's makeup. Purna's garish facepaint reminded Maroto of a diva he'd performed with a time or two, way back in the bad old days, except Carla Rossi's foulmouthed drag routine was a good deal more entertaining than anything he'd yet seen out of the nobles.

"Made good time," Maroto thought out loud, almost impressed by the lordling. Almost. "You in some kind of hurry?"

"I-" Purna gasped, head shaking, and readjusted the damp wig that had migrated to the side. "Damn."

"Yeah," said Maroto, then left the panting noble to peer back down the cliff. "Any more of you coming up?"

"No," said Purna. "Water."

"That how you ask for something?" said Maroto, passing Purna his cougar milk. He grinned when the fop coughed on the liquor, then chided himself as Purna spit out a mouthful-he shouldn't waste a drop of good drink on his charges. "Ah, gave you the wrong skin-here you are, Tapai, my mistake."

"Thank you, barbarian," Purna said, after recovering enough to properly speak. "I should have brought my own. Your first rule."

"How's that?"

"You told us the first rule of the Wastes was never to leave the camp without water."

"Half right," said Maroto, remembering now. "I said the first rule was to never leave the camp, period, but if you did, never to go without water. Sound advice. I know what I'm talking about."

"Of course you do," said Purna. The noble unbuttoned a removable velvet panel and used it to mop away grime and mascara sludge from around eyes as amber as a comb of dreamhoney. These popinjays always had something up their sleeves, if only another handkerchief. "You're even better than we were expecting."

Maroto sighed. Here it came, then. From their first night out the dirty lordlings had been trying to seduce him, which had initially flattered him. That was, until Maroto politely declined an invitation to share Duke Rackcleff's pleasure wagon, whereupon the jilted ninny had huffily informed him the proposition was solely due to a high-stakes wager the party had decided upon: who would be the first to bag the barbarian? Of all Maroto's wards, Purna was far from the worst on the eyes, but even if there hadn't been the pride angle, he still would have thought twice about rolling in the sand with the fop; in his experience, the upper crust were twice as likely to give you a pox as a prostitute, and half as inclined to finish you off if they came first.

"So I'm impressive, am I?" he said, eyeing the raggedy Ugrakari. "You're so impressed you came up here to what, rub my shoulders, maybe give me a token of your affection?"

"I beg your pardon?" This noble was a cool liar, no doubt-Purna almost seemed genuinely confused.

"I know about the bet, and I fear none of you stands to profit from my prick. Maroto is no whore, nor a rich lord's plaything," he said, studiously keeping his mind from the dark old nights when he had been so far down the hive that he couldn't even remember what he'd done to get his next sting.

"Oh, gross!" cried Purna. "I am not involved in that, I don't care how much lucre they put in the kitty. So disgusting!"

"Yes, well..." said Maroto, thinking that maybe Purna wasn't just referring to the ethics of such a wager, and flinching a little inside. "Then why follow me here? Such a climb is no place for a young, uh, person. Of distinction."

"Oh!" said Purna, eagerness replacing revulsion. "Diggelby let me use his hawkglass, and way over, ah, south of us, on this ridge, there was this great big lizard mooning itself on a rock. I thought we could hunt it!"

"Big lizard?" Maroto's sweaty skin went cold. "This ridge?"

"From where you were climbing up it looked to be just over that, what do you call it... escarpment? Those rocks there, I mean, over those a little bit-ah!" Purna shrieked upon noticing that he or she had pointed directly at a godguana, the horse-sized lizard watching them from atop a rock shelf some twenty yards away. It could be on top of them in three bounds of its enormous, banded legs. "There he is!"

"I see her," whispered Maroto, meeting the black gaze of the carnivorous calamity rather than glancing to where his mace rested against the stone. He knew where the weapon was, could snatch it without looking, but would give his two pinky fingers if he could avoid having to use it. Female godguanas grew bigger, could disembowel you with their hooked claws, poison you with their noxious bite, but were less territorial than the males, so maybe she was just investigating them, and when she saw that they were no- "Get it!" howled Purna, charging past him at the godguana. Maroto didn't waste his breath on a curse as he sidestepped toward his mace. Even as his hand found it missing his eyes located it. Purna. The noble held it high, bum-rushing a creature that half a dozen experienced hunters would have balked at taking on, and ululating all the way. "Wooooo!"

It would have been better to flee down the cliff, trusting the creature to gorge herself on Purna while he made good his getaway, but that mace meant a lot to Maroto. Purna closed the distance over the rough ground, dainty shoes gliding over the rocks with admirable alacrity. The godguana hissed and rose up on her hind legs, and even at this distance the stench of her maw made Maroto's eyes water as he seized up a melon-sized chunk of sandstone.

The monster dropped down from the rock shelf, directly on top of the charging fop. Maroto hurled his rock. Purna was crushed to the ground by one of the godguana's claws, and then Maroto's missile nailed the creature's left eye with such force that the sandstone exploded in a cloud of orange dust. The godguana's head listed sharply from the blow, but only for a moment, her long, black-scaled snout straightening back out as she surveyed Maroto, one eye beady as ever, the other a raw, bleeding wound. She tensed her claws, Purna moaning as the lizard's foot ground through cloth and skin alike. Maroto hoped the idiot noble lived long enough for him to kill this monster so that he could then have the satisfaction of hurling Purna off of the cliff.

The rock had certainly gotten the creature's attention; she launched herself straight at him. Smaller godguanas had an almost silly gait, their wide-armed dash anything but graceful. There was nothing silly about a full-grown female charging him, each stride covering half a dozen feet. Maroto whipped the dagger out of his belt as the godguana bore down on him. He braced himself, and when she lunged forward he ducked to the side of her mouth and went for her spiny neck. Grabbing her in an awkward headlock with his off hand, he was carried off the ground as she jerked away.

He clung on as she attempted to buck him loose, claws narrowly missing his tucked-up legs, his head pressed against that of the direlizard. As she thrashed, the edge of his flattop caught in her gnashing jaws, and he felt the tug on his scalp as she chewed his hair, the stink of the rotten mouth bordering on the sublime. All the while Maroto plunged his dagger through the tough scales between her shoulders, over and over, nicking himself on her ridge of spines in the process, blood flowing freely down the arm he held the creature with as it ground against her sharp hide.

It was a tried-and-true approach, and would have worked, too, if the luck gods hadn't taken a shit on him in the form of a boulder onto which the godguana slammed him. He lost his strength for but a moment, and then he was off the lizard, laid out atop the rock like a human sacrifice as the bloodied, raging monster reared back up... and here she came again, crashing down like a hammer on an obstinate walnut. He tried to roll away, knowing even as he did that he was too slow, that it had taken him too long to get his wind back, and now, yes, ugh, the full weight of the lizard crashed upon him, pinning him halfway off the boulder with her chest. Woof. So much for Maroto, his guts were about to be squeezed out either end, and- Then she was off of him, hissing louder than ever, her tail whipping the boulder a hairbreadth from his chin. The edge of the sandstone splintered off from the impact and he fell off the rock after it, landing in a crouch and bracing for the claws or bite that were surely coming. He had dropped the dagger at some point and was seeing double for the first time in years-this was it. He was irredeemably screwed.

Yet the twinned lizards shimmering in the dawn had turned their backs on him, and as his vision came back into focus he saw that one of her hind legs had been busted wide open at the haunch, the useless appendage oozing red through a mess of knotted muscle and torn scales. Purna limped just out of reach of the wounded godguana, warding off her snapping mouth with Maroto's mace rather than chancing another solid swing at it. Purna looked about as rough as the lizard, the noble's left side stained red from missing wig to torn bloomers, the priceless attire shredded to the skin and deeper still by the lizard's claws, and hold on, yes, there was a petite but decidedly feminine breast under the blood and tatters.

Even as Maroto registered this he stooped to get another missile, which stunned the godguana when it exploded against the crest on the back of her head. Purna didn't close the deal like she should have, instead using the opportunity to put more distance between herself and the lizard, so Maroto went for another rock. As he grabbed a good one the godguana gave up the fight, skittering away over the narrow ridge, trailing gore, but before she gained the shelter of a high rock formation his third stone popped her in the back, just above the tail, and, tripped up, the monster slid over the far edge of the cliff.

"Woof," said Maroto, slouching back to lean against the boulder that had almost been his gravestone. What a disaster. "You okay, Tapai?"

Purna waved the mace, then slumped her shoulders and dragged her feet over to him. She was missing a shoe, her stockings sullied and full of runs. Maroto still wanted to toss her down the ravine, but it would have been bad form, given how she'd just saved his life, so he settled for laying some hard truths on her.

"That was the dumbest damn thing one of you golden goblets has pulled yet," he growled. "And that includes bringing a fucking fish tank to the desert."

Maroto had, in fact, been rather impressed when he first saw Princess Von Yung's aquaricart, but after he learned that none of the vibrantly colored marine life was actually edible, his opinion on the matter had soured considerably.

"That was..." Purna shook her head, clearly on the edge of tears. Seeing how deep the gouges in her chest went, and the bruise rising on her scraped cheek, Maroto began to soften. Until she said, "That was the best. So fucking awesome. I saved your ass, barbarian! Woo!"

"You saved my arse?" Maroto could not believe his fucking ears. "Girl, the next time you put your head in a kiln to watch the devils dance, I'll let you look as long as you want instead of pulling you out. You nearly got us both dead!"

"Were you scared?" asked Purna. "It's okay if you were. I was scared, too. A little."