Hell or High Water Read Online Free PDF

attempt to leave, but otherwise I do as I will.”
    “A strange sort of imprisonment.”
    “And what makes you believe I am a prisoner, Seyusth?”
    It was, somehow, shocking to the core of his soul and the precise answer he’d anticipated, both at once. “I don’t understand. Issisk, why—?”
    “They needed another of our people,” Issisk said, his voice oddly flat, even for a reptile. “They grew accustomed to having one of us work alongside them, to serve as spy in Terwa territory, or negotiator with their patrols, or scout who could swim farther than any human.”
    “Accustomed to…” Seyusth was feeling dizzy, and not only from his wounds or the precarious angle.
    “The one who had been with them was dying. They were hunting our kind when they came across my patrol. I was the fortunate survivor, and I chose cooperation over consumption. And I had some time to converse with my tribesmate before he died of his illness.”
    “Who… Who was…?”
    “I thought you would never ask.”
    Issisk stepped aside, and a second lizardman strode—no, shambled—through the door. The dull scales and gaping holes were sufficient to tell Seyusth that this was the undead who had attacked him in the swamp.
    But this near, he could also see details he’d missed at the time—including a face that, though partially worn away, he recognized.
    “Oh, spirits. Hasseth…”
    “As I said, murderer,” the younger one hissed, “I know what you did.”

Chapter Four: In the Lair of the White Leech
    “Which one’s the Gullet want?”
    “Don’t think he cares, long as it ain’t one of the new ones. Someone been in there at least a few days.”
    The two warriors—muscle-bound, covered in scars of both battle and pestilence—waded into the waters, making for the stump from which the pulley could be operated.
    “What about that gussied-up Shackles pirate we took? He oughta be about ripe by now, yeah?”
    “Yeah, what is he? Two down, four over?” The White Leech reached for the mildewed rope, tugged—and nothing happened. A puzzled glance upward, and he could just barely make out an amorphous shape in the darkness, perched on the block-and-tackle.
    “Hey, what—!”
    The blood-smeared tooth wasn’t much of a weapon, and her left hand was all but useless. But when Ameyanda dropped upon the first of her captors, a feral snarl erupting through bared teeth, it made no difference.
    ∗∗∗
    “Issisk…” Somehow, though the iron stakes allowed little range of movement, Seyusth seemed to slump. “You must understand—”
    “Understand? Understand that you murdered your own cohort on your journey to the Terwa? That you snuck back to Haa-Ok and killed Errash, your own mentor, before skulking home with your tales of ambush? You never knew Hasseth survived, did you?”
    “I—”
    “He ran, Seyusth. The greatest warrior of Haa-ok, and he fled. He thought that, because it was you who tried to kill him, it must have been the will of the shaman. It was not until I spoke to him, in his dying days, and told him that Errash had also been murdered, and the lies you spun of what had occurred, that he knew it was you alone who had betrayed him. Betrayed us!”
    “Issisk, listen! Errash wanted the alliance for his own gain, not because the spirits told him so. The others, you… None of you understand what the Terwa Lords are! What we would become, were we to ally with them… The horrors we would have to accept, to inflict… I died with every Haa-Ok life I took, but I could not allow the delegation to deliver us into a devil’s bargain for the soul of our people!”
    “I do not know the Terwa Lords,” Issisk said stiffly. “I know only what you told me of them. How can I know, now, what of that is true?”
    “All of it. Issisk, I swear—”
    “What I know is that the blood of several Haa-Ok is on your talons. And that this was not your decision to make.
    “Some day, Seyusth, the eyes of the White Leech will grow