was precisely as bad as the giant’s stench had been. A face the size of a gas station grinned at me, and its breath washed over me when it spoke. I’d stood downwind of a dump once when they were burning tires, and I wished I was there again.
“Hello, blinder,” it said, glaring at me with a single eye set in the middle of its forehead.
Fuck.
The wind from the giant’s breath set me swaying. The vertigo was not a good combination with the stench, and I felt my stomach go into a slow roll. I forced myself to focus and look around. The others were hanging nearby, all of them apparently unconscious. We were hanging from ropes; other ropes swaying nearby held the skeletal remains of previous occupants. Other bones were scattered over the floor. I was not encouraged. The Tink arrows were mostly gone, leaving welts like wasp stings behind all over us.
“Now Clash,” said another voice. “Be nice to our guests, dear.” The voice came from behind me, and it sounded like it came from a throat that hadn’t drawn breath in centuries and wasn’t used to English anyway. The giant’s face wrinkled in irritation before it withdrew. It revealed a nighttime view of Seattle, lit here and there with fires and even electric lights. We were many stories above the ground, probably in an abandoned office building with part of the walls ripped off.
The owner of the ancient voice stumped around in front of me so that we stood face to face. I immediately wished for the return of the giant. She was larger than Gunner, though not nearly as large as the giant named Clash. She wore tatters and rags sewn together from other, smaller sets of clothing over her wrinkled, greenish flesh. No one had ever explained to me why so many of the supernatural races were greenish, but it was often true. This one also happened to look like she was made out of cottage cheese.
The worst part was the single socket in the middle of her forehead where an eye was supposed to be. It was raw and empty, and a few tiny white things wriggled down deep. I focused on not throwing up.
“One of the rock kin, I smell,” she said, that horrible voice rasping at my ears. “Would see. Can’t see. Tree kin arrows took my eye, didn’t it. Blinders. Blinders, the lot of you. Tasty.”
“I hear Dwarves taste terrible,” I said, my dry throat rendering my voice almost as bad as hers. I felt awful, almost welcoming the idea of being eaten.
“Hmm. Tell you when you’re eaten, maybe.”
She moved past me, toward the others, and I took stock. Panic gnawed at the back of my brain, jumping up and down and screaming to get my attention. I ignored it and did my best to breathe deeply in spite of the smell. I wasn’t in a good spot. I hated heights, disliked open air, and loathed the sensation of dangling instead of being solidly planted.
The Hag drifted between the hanging bodies, idly tearing a legbone out of one of the dead and gnawing on it as she did so. While her attention was focused on Gunner and she burbled to herself about making soup stock for her whole family, I did a midair sit-up that damn near made my head explode. I reached down my boot and withdrew a small knife. I looked up at the ropes holding me and took a deep breath. This would suck.
I was trying to get into a sitting position again when a quick “Hsst” cut through the air. I rolled back down and looked around to find Ethan staring at me. He very deliberately looked at the knife in my hand and then directed his gaze toward Birgitte, who hung nearby.
I looked at her and saw that she was awake as well. Her mouth was set in a grim line but she was awake. I glanced at Ethan again, who nodded, and I started to swing my arms back and forth.
As I built momentum, I got closer and closer to Birgitte with every pass. Unfortunately, I also got closer to a hanging skeleton on the other side. The rope started to creak as well, not particularly loud at first but gaining volume; I’m not a light guy, especially weighed down with all my armor. I turned the knife around in my hand so that I gripped it by the blade, and when I was close enough to Birgitte I reached as far as I could.
She missed it. I swung back the other way, wobbling in the air thanks to my gyrations, and I crashed into the skeleton on the other side. It exploded as if I’d hit it with a grenade, bones scattering all over the floor amongst their brethren. At the same time, the ropes around my ankles slipped, causing me to cry out as I gave in to the panic for a moment.
I cried out again when I clamped down on the knife in my hand and the keen edge bit through the leather and into my palm. I swung closer to Birgitte as the Hag turned toward the god-awful noises I was making. Birgitte calmly reached out and pulled the knife out of my hand, slicing the hole wider and making me roar at her.
She ignored me utterly, bending upward as smoothly as if lying flat on the ground. I made mental note of the way her body moved as she cut herself free, knowing that my hormones would want to refer back to that image when I wasn’t bleeding out in a charnel pit. Birgitte made no noise at all when she dropped to the floor, her armor and natural grace working together as she dodged behind Raine.
The Hag found me swinging and caught me with one hand that was almost as big as my torso. She leaned in for a sniff. “Rock-kin blood, I smell,” she whispered. “Poor thing’s hurt itself. Won’t do, won’t do.”
I lost track of what Birgitte was doing as the Hag pulled my hand toward her mouth and reached out with a knobbled, warty tongue to lick at the blood that dripped out of my glove. Her spit stung like nettles but I couldn’t get loose of her no matter how I howled and jerked my arm around. Finally she tired of it and let me go to swing again. I was all set to bellow at the residual pain when I realized that the cut didn’t hurt anymore.
I looked down and saw that the Hag’s spit had sealed the wound. Granted, it looked greenish and unhealthy, but at least the cut was closed. I managed to look up just as one of Raine’s hammers slammed into the side of the Hag’s knee, toppling her with the sound of splintering bone. She let out an agonized cry with that horrible voice.
Birgitte had been busy. She’d found our weapons, and while her muscles weren’t as prominent as Raine’s she’d had plenty of time to set herself up for a five-foot swing at the Hag’s knee with his hammer.
The monster screamed and squalled, sounding like a tin roof in a tornado. Birgitte threw the knife she’d taken from me, slicing through the ropes that held Baran. When he landed and she passed him his own knives, he set to work freeing the others. I was last; I probably wasn’t an important part of the equation now that I’d given them the means to escape.
The important parts were the other Hags coming up the stairs in response to the noise the first one was making. They weren’t coming quickly; the stairs were sized for normal Humans, and the Hags had to stoop and maneuver, but they were coming. It sounded like approximately a thousand of them rumbling up the stairs. That we were probably only listening to a half dozen was no comfort. I tried not to look or feel too desperate as the sounds got louder. Once Gunner was free and had his sword again, slicing through the ropes went a lot faster.
I hit the ground in a heap and fought to pull in breath as I struggled to my feet. None of it was easy, all of it was necessary. Birgitte tossed axe and knife my way, barely nice enough to aim them so that they didn’t slice through my lungs. I picked up my weapons as the first of the Hags burst through the doorway.
The one on the ground writhed and cawed at them and they answered in the same not-language. Baran went after the one on the ground as Gunner ran to meet the oncoming horde. I joined Gunner.
I heard a mighty clang behind me when Raine’s hammer connected with the floored Hag’s skull and simply bounced off. It didn’t seem to do the Hag a lot of good but he didn’t go straight through like he should have.
“They’ve got iron bones!” Ethan yelled. “Go for the joints and soft spots!” With that, he aimed and neatly drilled a Hag through the eye socket with one pistol. Apparently we were allowed to use guns again. I didn’t have time to celebrate. While Ethan’s downed Hag was causing trouble for the others on the stairs, a pair of them had gotten to the top a
lready.
Gunner swung madly, his sword clattering on his target’s bones whenever he struck. His Hag blocked with her forearms, apparently unconcerned with the cuts that he opened up there, and she struck with all the super-sized power at her command. Gunner’s sword was becoming chipped and dull, snagging in the hanging ropes and their awful burdens as he swung again and again.
I didn’t have time to contemplate the situation for long. A Hag bore down on me, screaming like a mountain lion caught in a wood chipper, and I abruptly had my hands full. I had to fight the urge to slip into the soothing rage, that berserking that would let me rest in the midst of its warm embrace. The quarters were too cramped and I would be likely to hit the wrong target if I let myself flip out. Instead I chopped at her legs to try to slow her down.
It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, though my axe did sink a couple inches into her thigh before coming to a stop on her iron femur. She snarled at me and took a half-step back, twisting her hips, and the handle of the axe slipped out of my hands like it was greased. I immediately reached for my shotgun, realized it was in the pile in the corner, and instead pulled out my knife.
“Oh yeah. Come get some,” I said. Four inches of knife versus five hundred pounds