Free City of Steel (Chaos Awakens Book 3) by Heath Pfaff Page A

said, peering around the curve of the stairs, down at the approaching flames. "You should get that door open."
    Xan slammed his shoulder into the door again, but the wood wouldn't give.  "I'm trying!"  He snapped.  Smoke was filling the air all around him. 
    "Really, because it doesn't look like you're trying very hard." The other Xan seemed a bit agitated. "You're mostly troll. Can't you tap into that strength a bit?"
    "Do you really think I'm not giving this my all?!"  Xan’s anger was simmering down into a dark loathing.  "You talk and talk, but you never help.  What good are you?" 
    "I'm you, idiot.  Or did you forget?" 
    "Now," Xan growled as he reared back to kick the door again.  "Is not the time for this!"  Rage and fear snapped inside of him and he gave a ferocious roar as he slammed into the door with everything that he could muster.  There was a loud crack and for an instant Xan wasn't certain whether his foot had broken, or the door had, and then the heavy wooden portal swung away from him. The locking mechanism hung limply from the frame with a piece of the door still dangling from it.  He charged from the stairwell out onto the wall, gasping for a clean breath of air.  It took him a moment of coughing and choking to clear his lungs. He wasn't entirely out of danger, but being back outside was an improvement. 
    There was little time to waste. The assassin oriented himself and began searching for a way over the burning wall. A gurgling grunt sounded from the wall ahead of him and his eyes shot up in time to see one of the infected creatures stumbling along the wall in his direction. Chunks of its flesh fell off as it moved and a cloud of angry, flying insects buzzed around its head. Xandrith noted that the thing had a bow hanging from its shoulder and he recalled that Lottan had said the caravan men had been fired upon. One of them had even been killed. Perhaps that arrow had been fired as a warning shot by this poor, revolting mess of a man? Either way, that arrow may have taken a life, but it had probably saved many more.
    Without another moment's hesitation Xan dropped himself over the wall before the shambling horror could reach him.  As he dropped himself down the wall far faster than was really safe his fingers ached and the wound in his ribs burned and tore.  He'd had enough of this cursed town and its residents.  His feet hit the ground before the infected man with his bow started howling in madness down the wall at him, a servant to the parasites that had taken his body.  Xandrith turned his back on that man and the burning fortress.
    It was time to begin his long trek back to the caravan.  He was exhausted.  He hadn't slept since he'd left the caravan, and he was injured.  Despite that, he had no intention of resting before he'd returned to Lottan's camp.  As much as he had no reason to trust those men, they seemed a preferable alternative to the horrors of the burning town and the wilderness around it. 
    Besides, the sooner he returned to their camp, the sooner they could be underway again.  If he could secure passage with them heading north, it would make for a much more comfortable road up into the mountains.  Xan couldn't begin to guess where he'd need to go from there, but that was a good start.  The prospect of comfort drove his feet onward despite his exhaustion.  The thought of a bed, a cot, or even a bed roll on the ground, was all the motivation he needed to keep himself moving forward.  The quiet and the calm freed his mind to think and before long his thoughts drifted back to dark places. 
    Kassa's dark eyes flashed through his thoughts, accompanied by a pain in his human heart. It wasn't all at the memory of being stabbed either.  Where had she gone?  Was she safe? Xandrith knew that everything that had happened to her was his fault.  He'd dragged her into this mess.  He should have turned her away long, long before anything had happened to her.  He'd