Bawd’s shriek pierced through the air.
The ghast raised itself up at the boneless waist, lunging for Fie. With a furious scream, she lashed out, swinging the sword in a clumsy arc. It sheared through the ghast at the belly. Both halves flopped in the dust like a cast-off shirt and trousers. She drew the chief’s sword in her other hand, slashing wildly on her knees, until aught that was left of the ghast were bloody rags yet writhing about her. Fie seized the scraps by the sickening handful and hurled them into the well.
She stumbled to her feet, sucking in the dusty air, and bellowed, “ALL CROWS TO THE COMMONS!”
The order caught and spread, echoing back to her from her own Crows on the east side of town. So, too, did a terrible and familiar airy howl, one Fie knew all too well.
There were a great many things she hated about the skin-ghasts, but chief among them was how, when they moved swift enough, the wind whistled through their empty husks. As a chorus of those whistlesswept across the commons, Fie finally kenned the enormity of what had come for them.
Karostei had at least a hundred dead on its hands. And if Fie was right, that meant a hundred skin-ghasts were stripping free of their bones at this very moment.
Crows poured from the streets, the slinking forms of ghasts on their heels. The three new ghasts from the arbiter’s pyre swayed drunkenly toward Fie, but she had an easier time dispatching these, hacking them to pieces small enough to kick into the well.
Madcap reached her first, the jug of flashburn still swinging from their hand. “Out,” Fie wheezed, pointing the chief’s sword toward the closed gates, only to find that was a fool’s hope: ghasts were already massing before it in numbers Fie couldn’t cut through.
“New plan?” Madcap asked.
The lone Phoenix tooth on her string waited, patient, inevitable.
No.Fie wasn’t going to burn it here, not with the safety of Jasimir’s procession still days away. But they’d laid fuel and flashburn all about Karostei by now. Perhaps fire could still staunch the ghasts’ numbers.
“New plan.” Fie handed Madcap her Hawk sword, much to their surprise and delight, and fumbled for her flint instead as Varlet arrived with another three of her Crows. That left three yet beyond Fie’s sight.
“Where’s the closest tinder heap?” Fie asked the new arrivals.
Varlet shook his head. “No good, chief. They’re charging right through the firewood and scattering it. And…” He grimaced and pointed at the nearby pyre. “They’re leaving it too damp to light.”
Fie looked, saw what he meant, and wished she hadn’t. For most of the dead, their skin had been the only thing holding the decaying flesh and innards together. It would take more than a flint to light the wet mess of a pyre now.
She didn’t realize she’d reached for the Phoenix tooth until it was rolling between her fingers.
Then she saw Wretch stumble from an alleyway, Bawd’s arm slung over her shoulders. The younger woman was limping swift as she could on a foot bent at a gut-churning angle.
The gray, mottled arm of a skin-ghast coiled about Wretch’s ankles and yanked. She fell.
Fie screamed. Her last Phoenix tooth was singing through her bones before she even knew she’d called it.
The skin-ghast shriveled with a rancid crackle as golden fire ate it whole. Fie pushed the tooth harder, the fire farther, and it swelled beyond Wretch and Bawd, driving back some ghasts and devouring others.
“Flashburn,” Fie ordered, and Madcap set the half-empty jug by her feet. “Get them clear—”
Varlet and Madcap darted to Wretch and Bawd and half dragged them to the relative safety of the well. Fie tore a strip of her cloak off and stuffed it down the jug’s neck. Golden fire snagged on the rag’s end, crawling up the crowsilk.
Fie ran a few awkward paces toward the ghasts swelling to the east, then hurled the jug as hard as she could. She didn’t see it land, but she certainly heard the shatter and the crack like thunder that followed. A billow of fire tore a hole through the skin-ghasts before her, burning white as it raced along the spill lines and chewed through empty skin.
Even better, droplets had splashed onto the walls of the nearest home, sending fingers of flame prying at the eaves. Fie doubted it would be enough to set the whole town ablaze, but at least some of those sparks would find tinder there.
She pushed the ghasts back with another flare of Phoenix-gold fire and retreated to the well, where she found Jade kneeling over Ruffian’sbody. Most of the other two bands seemed to have made it back as well, and from the grim looks on their faces, they didn’t expect the missing to return anytime soon.
Jade’s eyes glistened as she looked up from Ruffian, but she pushed herself to her feet, drawing her own broken blade. “How long will the fire tooth last?”
“Maybe a minute like this.” Fie whipped about to take stock of the ghasts closing in. “It’ll burn out faster the more fire I call.”
“Then here.” Jade passed her an open jug of flashburn and pointed at the ghasts piling up between them and the gate. “Last we have. Use that trick again and clear the way out.”
Fie tore another strip from her cloak and shoved it into the spout. From its weight, the jug was nigh full, more than enough to blow a hole through the skin-ghasts. “Fall back!” she called to the Crows, then hauled the jug back and took one swift step, a second, swung her arm—
—and crashed to the dust as something caught her by the feet. The flashburn jug landed, unlit and unbroken, in a soft cushion of shifting, gray-mottled skin. It rolled to a rest at the base of the gate.
