Page 37 of Fortune's Blade

“—and how they’ll bill the both of you if we don’t work together!” he declared. “Help me and I’ll help you. Otherwise, it’ll be an outworld double feature and we’ll all be royally—”

He broke off as Ray suddenly jumped to his feet and went over to the tent flap, which was serving as a door, and looked out. “Hey!” he said to someone out of sight. “Hey, you. Yeah you, tusker face. Get in here!”

“What . . . are you doing?” Marlowe asked, his voice suddenly low and reasonable.

“Getting us outta here. They wanna feed you to their monster, that’s fine. But not me. And not Dorina!”

Marlowe sneered. “I might have known. All that was necessary to get you off your arse was a threat to the little woman—”

“One more word, and I will personally beat you to death.”

“You and what army?”

“His,” Ray said, hiking a thumb at the enormous specimen who had just torn aside the curtain and was peering in at us through tiny eyes.

They were the only tiny things about him.

I thought at first that he was merely a larger-than-average troll, as the muscles on his muscles would seem to suggest. But ogres were the ones with tusks and he had two of them, massive, cracked, yellowing things framing a large, jowl-filled face. He also had whiskers, although I had never seen an ogre with a beard. Trolls could grow them, however, and his towering bulk was also more indicative of that breed. A hybrid perhaps?

I didn’t know, but it seemed that, like the liger, a hybrid of a lion and a tiger, the result of a troll-ogre cross was larger than either of his parents. Which was a concern as he did not seem pleased to have been summoned. And was even less so when Ray skipped back a few yards and began saying something in the local merchants’ cant which did not sound complimentary.

“He is going to get us all killed,” Marlowe said, in that same eerily calm voice.

“Ray,” I said, but he flapped a hand at me.

“Yeah, you understood that all right, didn’t you?” Ray asked, his voice muffled slightly as he was stuffing something into his mouth. “I said your daddy musta been a wild boar, to give you tusks like that. So, what was mamma, huh?”

“Ray,” I said, a bit more urgently.

“I’m thinking bear, considering how hairy you are. Was that it? Was your mamma a hairy bear? You sure stink bad enough—”

The guard seemed to know some English, or perhaps he merely resented Ray’s tone, which was no more respectful than his words. Either way, he abruptly threw back the curtain and entered the room, thus breaking the ward, which I supposed was what Ray had wanted. Although why he had wanted that, I wasn’t sure.

Until I saw him swallow whatever he had been eating, shoot me a triumphant grin, and grab the troll by the arm.

And abruptly had his formerly patchy scruff become a lush, full beard that cascaded halfway down his chest.

“What is happening?” Marlowe asked me, as the troll creature snatched Ray up by the neck and shook him like a maraca.

“I think Ray is under the impression that the Dragon’s Claw he just consumed will lend him the guard’s strength.”

“Will it?”

“No,” I said, and leapt.

The subsequent fight was hard, prolonged and vicious, and involved the troll snatching me off his back to use as a club to bash the other two prisoners. But Ray jumped back up, grabbed the bench and smashed it into the creature’s skull. And Marlowe proved the feys’ estimate of his sanity correct when he roared again before headbutting the creature considerably below the belt, causing it to drop me and grab him.

Ray and I managed to wrestle the guard to the floor before he could do what he clearly had in mind and rip Marlowe apart, and then I slammed my fist into the massive face a few dozen times, until he finally passed out. It felt like hitting solid rock and left me with bloody knuckles, a sore arm, and a renewed appreciation for fey resiliency. If defeating a simple guard was this difficult, what would their champion be like?

I decided that I did not want to find out.

We left the guard in his own cuffs, his arms trapped behind him and a gag in his mouth, and exited the tent. And by we, I include Marlowe, although I was soon regretting bringing him along. He was an intensely unpleasant man.

“Get me out of these cuffs!” he demanded, as he ran awkwardly beside us.

“I already tried,” I reminded him. “The guard breaking the ward released you from your tether to it, but the cuffs themselves are spelled.”

“Then get the key!”