Hell or High Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

careless, and I will escape. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps a year from now. But I will make my way home, and I will tell all Haa-Ok what you did. That it was not the wrath of the spirits that allowed an assassin to reach our shaman, but a traitor who knew his magics. And they will make their own choice, as they should have long ago.”
    “Issisk, please!” It was not a word that came easily to the lizardfolk, above all a practical and pragmatic people. “Please, if your anger is with me, take it out on me. But you will be doing Haa-Ok only harm if you—”
    “You have no more words I wish to hear, traitor.”
    Seyusth was still pleading as his cousin disappeared through the open doorway, followed by the shambling Hasseth. If his people were capable of it, he would have wept.
    It was the commotion from outside—running, howling, the thump of fists on armor as wild men worked themselves into a frenzy—that snapped him out of it a few moments later. From here, he could see absolutely nothing of what was happening. All he could tell was that it wasn’t a fire.
    Which, given the rather damp state of affairs, he’d have known anyway.
    The sounds faded into the distance, the night now filled with nothing but the hum of insects and the hoot of a hunting bird. And then…
    “Hsst! Seyusth!”
    “Issisk knows things he shouldn’t.”
    Ameyanda slipped in through the doorway, carrying one of the White Leech blades. The human looked awful—her eyes were slightly wild, she winced with every step—but it seemed that most of the blood splattered across her armor and skin was not hers.
    “We don’t have long,” she told him, limping across the open chamber. “I left a trail down to the water’s edge, and pushed one of the small rafts into the current. Not one with the dead who, uh, row,” she clarified. “But we have only minutes before they catch up and realize I’m not aboard.”
    “Then we had better act, and discuss the details of your miraculous escape another day.”
    She nodded and halted before him, examining the rough wooden cross.
    “Seyusth,” she said softly, “there’s no way to do this gently, not in the time we have.”
    “I understand.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Do it.”
    Even in the blackness, the room spun as she pulled the cross from the corner, twisted it clumsily, and laid it flat. He felt her fingers squeeze between his scales and the curved iron pinning his right arm; saw her flinch from the touch of the necromantic runes; heard the scrape as she braced her feet on the wood.
    Wood splintered. Iron screeched. And despite his most adamant efforts, Seyusth screamed.
    ∗∗∗
    When it was done, they lay sprawled on the floor, chests heaving, growing sticky with the lizardman’s blood. Ameyanda tried not to stare at the raw meat and exposed tendon visible through the rents in her companion’s flesh.
    Especially when they began to twitch.
    “They still work well enough…” he muttered. His arm shaking, he reached a hand out to the huntress’s shoulder.
    “Seyusth…”
    But he was already speaking in his own reptilian tongue.
    Ameyanda gasped as an icy shock ran down her arm, as though someone had replaced her blood with mountain runoff. It faded swiftly, however, and so too did much of the agony in her hand.
    Not all—and it still burned with a sickly heat—but any relief was welcome.
    “Tomorrow,” the shaman said softly, “I can cure the infection. I fear you will have to bear it until then.”
    “Thank you. I—”
    Again he spoke in his own language, and the worst of his wounds began to close over. Much like her own, it was far from a complete cure, but impressive for all that.
    “What of Issisk?” she asked, staggering roughly to her feet.
    Seyusth’s face went tight, as though he’d only just remembered why they’d come.
    “He is here. He… ran into the swamp when the commotion began. I must find him before they do.”
    “Wait just a—”
    The shaman staggered