the sergeant on your route, I can tell him that we switched routes because you owed me some obscure favor and I preferred the breeze off the sea at the northern edge of each loop.”
This last part was true, of course, and Eskaras found himself looking forward to the salty tang of that cooling breath. Brek broke into a broad, triumphant grin.
“I can mention that I saw you quite recently, but I will lie no further if he goes searching for you in earnest,” Eskaras warned.
“A sound plan,” Brek said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I could ask for no more, and I thank you, Eskaras.”
Eskaras waved a hand, dismissing the man and his gratitude at once. “Be gone, you greased eel, before I reconsider.”
His friend set off at a jog back the way they had come, heading for the southeastern stairwell. Eskaras sighed again, watching him recede into the distance. Then he shouldered his crossbow and continued the longer route to which he had just agreed. Searching for stars in the hazy night sky, he wondered if Brek’s escapades would this time cost them both more than poor watch assignments.
A cool breeze played along his back, carrying with it a strange medley of sounds, and Eskaras halted. He squinted along the battlement in the direction Brek had gone, but he could make out nothing except the distant glow of the lamp in the last bastion. He moved to the interior wall of the battlement and peered down into the city. Even at this late hour, the cobbled city streets in this section were well lit and people moved in miniature along them. He frowned. The wall played tricks with sound, often carrying the faintest of sounds to the heights of the wall-walk, or allowing one guard to overhear another’s words over great distance. Eskaras thought he had heard a man’s cry and the clang of metal upon stone, but he could see no sign of conflict below. It could have been some shady dealings in an alley below that was screened to his view, but he had an uneasy feeling. It had sounded like his friend Brek, and the draft that carried the sound had come from that direction, when the winds up here tended to run firmly the opposite direction. Most puzzling of all, the breeze had been almost frigid in an otherwise hot and humid night.
Eskaras braced his crossbow, drawing the string back and fitting a bolt into the channel. He held the weapon ready as he stalked back along the battlement in the direction Brek had gone and from whence the sound had seemed to emanate. If it was another of Brek’s pranks and he received a bolt in the leg for his efforts, it would serve him right.
The evening hung still and stifling once more. The sound did not repeat, and Eskaras began to think he had imagined it all. Then, as he approached the nearest lamp-lit bastion, the air grew colder with each step, and he noticed a blue tinge mingling with the amber glow spilling through the doorway. Through that arch he saw a crossbow lying in the middle of the floor on its back, as if cast aside. Eskaras hesitated, his breath hanging in a mist before him, when a gurgling moan from ahead galvanized him into action. Uttering a cry meant as much to bolster his own courage as to startle whatever he found within, he plunged through the entry and into the bastion.
Inside was a sight that froze the blood in his veins.
Brek was lying supine in a corner, his sword in one outstretched hand while his other arm was flung up before his averted face, trying in vain to fend off his attacker. He must have been trying to reach the alarm bell, Eskaras thought, as he was but a few feet from it.
Hunched atop Brek was a creature out of nightmare. It was larger than a man but translucent, and its blue radiance filled the small room. It seemed to waver before his eyes, and its lack of definition made it challenging to ascertain its true features, but Eskaras had the impression of a skeletal form swathed in some billowing, gossamer substance. He could not tell if it crouched or floated over the thrashing guard. Its elongated head hung low between bony shoulders, leering close to Brek, and tapered talons seemed to sink into the man’s flesh without drawing blood.
At Eskaras’s cry, the monstrosity swung its head to