A man and a woman broke from the cover of doorways on opposite sides of the street and cast aside shortbows. The man straightened his left arm, causing a hornbull hide buckler strapped to his forearm to slide into his hand. His other hand brought forth a broadsword. The woman drew forth forth a rapier and maingauche with identical fretwork hilts. Two more men materialized behind them, weapons in hand. A fifth figure stepped from a farther doorway as the remaining Sky Guardsmen ran to engage the killers.
Rann gained his feet. He started forward in a crouching glide, only to stop and clutch at his chest as agony shot through him. 'Dark Ones!' he gasped, 'I've torn something loose!'
He had undergone terrific punishment in recent months. Broken ribs had been his reward when he sought to interpose himself between a raging Vicar of Istu and his helpless queen. His chest barely wrapped with bandage before he was off in the saddle again, Synalon had ordered him to Athalau and a nearer brush with death. An immense block of ice had fallen from the vaulted roof of the living glacier in which Athalau lay, striking down Rann and the Sky Guardsmen who had trailed Moriana, Fost Longstrider, and their treacherous spirit companion, Erimenes. Only the wildest luck had prevented the prince from being mashed into red gruel by the ice fall. And only the fierce, driven vitality and determination of the man and his lineage had enabled him to survive, with a dozen bones shattered and a score of muscles torn loose.
He had the best healing sorcery of the Sky City; but not even the peerless mages of the Soaring World could make him altogether whole again in the short time alloted them.
Conquest for queen and City had repeatedly called him forth half mended, still hurt and hurting. Now his wounds betrayed him. He fought for balance as blackness veiled his senses.
'Your Highness!' he heard Maguerr call in alarm.
Rann struggled against the darkness threatening to swallow him. He saw his remaining bodyguard surge forward to perform his duty. With a musical skirl, the Guardsman's curved blade met the straightsword assassin. The woman with the rapier circled, watching for an opening. The next two assassins went wide to bypass the combatants, making for the prince with deadly intent shining on their faces.
'Come forward and meet your death, dog lover,' snarled the Guardsman, Ahue. 'At least you'll know a good death from City steel.'
The assassin was a good man, strong wristed and supple, but his foe was of the superbly trained Sky Guard. Ahue's scimitar beat the larger blade aside. The killer screamed shrilly as the caress of steel severed veins and tendons of his swordarm. His blade fell, ringing on the cobblestones as his cry drowned in blood bubbling from slashed throat. Before he fell, the Guardsman was lunging for the woman, launching a vicious hail of blows that she was hard-pressed to fend off despite her paired weapons. 'Your turn, bitch,' Ahue cried, recovering to slash out again.
'Bitch, am I?' she snarled. 'Better than you who defends a eunuch! Or are the two of you lovers? Do you share his bed?'
Ahue viciously attacked, angered by the slurs both on him and his prince. Rann was a eunuch, castrated by the Thailint barbarians. The Guardsman's pride prevented him from accepting this insult calmly, even though he knew it was intended to enrage him and thus force him into a deadly mistake. He slashed fiercely, incoherently screaming out his anger.
The black-haired swordswoman gave way. Her two companions hesitated. The one on the right, a lean straw-blond man who kept a pair of rapiers twitching before him like the antennae of some giant insect, feinted a lunge. The Guardsman's scimitar shot sparks off the twinned blades and sent the man reeling backward.
Ahue spun and lunged, almost gutting the burly red-beard who tried to dart by on the left and give his friend time to bring up his dirk for a parry. The red-beard lashed out with his spiked ball mace. Holes tapped in its haft made it whine like a banshee, a high, unnerving sound. The Guardsman was not distracted. He ducked nimbly below its lethal sweep and returned a cut that opened a long red dripping slash in the olive-drab fabric stretched taut across the maceman's thigh.
The three killers retreated. The Guardsman faced them with a wild laugh. A killing frenzy was upon him, and even seasoned slayers such as these quailed before his madness.
'Stand back!' barked the same harsh voice that had ordered the assassins forward. A tall woman strode forward. Her pale blonde hair was cut square across the brows, though it swung free behind, brushing broad shoulders. In her hands she held a curious implement, the like of which the Guardsman had never seen before. He continued to smile defiantly, but his eyes narrowed at the peculiar weapon.
Though exotic, the device was not unfamiliar to Rann. By titanic effort of will he forced himself away from the pilaster he used to prop himself upright. 'Ahue, get back!' he shouted desperately.
In his frenzy, Ahue did not hear. Or perhaps he heard and for the first time defied an order from his prince and commander. It was the first and last time. Ahue brought his scimitar up from guard, preparing to hurl himself upon his new antagonist. The blonde woman swung something around her scarred left hand. A black blur whined toward the Guardsman.
Ahue cursed as a chain wrapped itself around his throat. A fist-sized leaden ball smashed into the side of his head, staggering him. He caught the chain in his gauntleted left hand. The blonde woman jerked the chain with all the might of her beefy shoulders. Ahue plunged forward, swinging wildly with his scimitar. The blonde fouled it with her chain. Her right hand turned and swept upward. Breath and life gusted from Ahue's mouth as the upturned sickle blade tore through his light mail shirt into his guts, ripping upward. The tip of the sickle curved within his ribcage to cleave his heart. For a long moment Ahue stared past the woman's left shoulder, breast pressed to hers as though in comradely embrace, his gore gushing onto the front of her body as his wide brown eyes gaped in final surprise. Then he fell.
The killers sighed. They had stopped to watch the dance of death between their leader and the berserk Sky Guardsman. Now they started forward again, watching Rann with grim singlemindedness. The blonde drew her sickle blade free, disentangled the chain from the corpse with a musical tinkle and stepped forward.
With unnatural clarity Rann heard the sounds: Maguerr muttering in horror behind him; the many-throated murmur of crowds in Bilsinx's main street, oblivious to the deadly drama being enacted a few hundred feet away; the scuff of soft sole leather on stone; even the hissing of gasses venting from the cooling corpse of Ahue.
'I am Prince Rann Etuul and you shall not have me so easily,' he said, pushing the tip of his chin toward the dead Ahue. Rann hadn't expected any of these killers to follow the direction of his gesture. They were too good for that. But he'd lost nothing by trying.
He collected himself, pushed pain aside, forced the darkness from his vision. Battle lust sang its adrenaline song in his veins. He knew that for the next crucial few moments he would be able to function at almost full capacity. His mind had the cold clearness it always did when he went into battle. The sickness and desperation he had felt just heartbeats ago had been transmuted into exultation and anticipation. Fall he might, but he would drink deep of blood and pain before yielding to the Hell Call.
'Die, eunuch,' said the man facing Rann. The straw-haired young man danced forward, grinning, rapiers questing. Rann glided to him. The soles of his calf-high moccasins never left the street. The rapier points darted in a quick one-two attack. Rann's scimitar dashed them aside with contemptuous ease.
The youth raised an eyebrow and began to circle. Rann knew what he attempted; the assassin wanted to get the prince to circle with him so that one of his fellows could slip a blade in from behind. Rann circled in a direction counter to the other's motion so that their left sides came close and the man's body stayed between Rann and the deadly sickle and chain.
That was the weapon Rann feared most: aizant-eshk it was called, the devil's claw. The name was appropriate.
The blond man stopped circling a few steps before his right arm would have begun crowding the gray-green stone of a facade. Rann faced him coolly, left arm half extended with his blade, right hand open and held by his hip in readiness for a grab at the other's weapon.
Rann sorely felt the lack of a parrying weapon. Normally he carried a spike dagger of his own design tucked into his right boot. But he was in Bilsinx today as a Sky Guardsman as well as Prince of the Sky City. Sky Guardsmen prided themselves that they never carried daggers, except for those rare occasions when they fought on foot. In flight they never came closer than sword's length from a foe.
'Are you going to fight or wait for me to die from old age?' demanded Rann as the man continued to circle.
Something in the words affected the blond man. Rann saw his eyes glaze slightly with rage. An opportunity.
