Now all he had to do was capitalize on it.
He waited until he saw the other tense for a lunge, then snapped the scimitar in a whining overhead wrist cut. With a clash, the rapiers met in a defensive cross and caught the descending blade. The triumphant grin on the blond man's face changed to a look of astonishment as Rann deftly turned his wrist and thrust the curved sword down inside the other's guard. The point went into the assassin's neck where it met the notch of his clavicle. Blood fountained, his knees buckled, and the confident light in his eyes faded in an instant.
Experience and coolness had aided the prince. He doubted the others would fall prey so easily.
Rann ripped his sword free and spun, whipping the scimitar in an eye-high cut parallel to the ground. The black-haired woman was almost upon him. Her rapier fended the stroke, but her comrade's blood spattered into her eyes. As she blinked frantically to clear her vision, Rann brought the scimitar in beneath her main-gauche in a quick backhanded return. The woman howled and doubled over, dropping both weapons to clutch at the rope intestines spilling from her belly.
The whisper of steel on steel warned the prince. He flung himself headlong, jarring every bone in his body. The lead ball of the devil's claw clattered by inches above him, drawing its chain after like a comet's tail. The weight ricocheted off stone polished to a high gloss by innumerable feet. Rann rolled fast as the blonde woman reeled in the ball. As soon as he was clear he pulled himself to his feet. His head spun; the adrenaline rush was fading fast and when it went, so would his already slim chance of survival.
'Now it is time for you to die, little man,' the blonde told him. He cast a quick glance at the red-bearded man and dismissed him as a real danger. The woman was a different case.
Rann needed to know more about the blonde if he was to successfully defeat her. Gathering that information would prove difficult. She was good, too good. As she neared, twirling the ball on a half yard of chain, holding the sickle loosely, her hand protected by a brass strap fastened to the haft as a sort of knuckleduster, he clearly made out the indigo mark on her right cheek. It was a convolute squared mandala.
From his limited experience in the City's commerce, he knew it for the tattoo of the Dyers' Guild in High Medurim. That explained her deadly expertise. The hereditary guilds controlled that city's industry with an iron hand. Those born outside a guild were forced to live on the dole or by outlawry; those born into a craft for which they lacked aptitude or interest, unless they bought out of their birth guild and into another, were doomed to the same fate.
But the guilds needed enforcers to keep power over their members, and to prosecute their ever-changing rivalries and feuds. They kept large contingents of professional killers. Some imported masters from Jorea, the North Continent, or the Far Archipelago. Others trained native Medurimites, providing opportunity for lucrative employment even for those forced to live outside a guild. But whether imported or domestic, the Weapons Masters of High Medurim were among the most perfect murderers to be found anywhere in the world. The blonde-haired woman with the feral look to mouth and eyes was one of that kindred.
That knowledge didn't cheer Rann. If anything, it drained some of his determination. At his fighting best he knew he was more than a match for gutter killers like her. But now…
'Yes, little man,' she cooed, moving closer. 'Your death is at hand. Come. Don't fight it. Let me dispatch you without pain, i promise you won't feel even a twinge.'
Over his left shoulder Rann heard low incantation. Maguerr was trying to summon help on his geode. Rann grimaced; the mage had more nerve than he would have credited him with. Small good his unexpected steadiness would do. The only people who might receive his call were in the City overhead. Even the swift eagles were unlikely to arrive before the issue was settled. Rann sidestepped toward the center of the deserted street, need for room overriding the worry that one assailant might get in back of him. He felt the first twinges of pain in his chest and knew help would not arrive in time.
'It is you who will die,' he said. Rann fought down giddiness. His words rang hollow in his ears, and he knew she laughed at him, this blonde killer from High Medurim.
'Your pet wizardling's magic will avail him naught,' she said, moving closer. 'Your eagles will take too long to arrive. Your corpse will be stretched out on the street for an afternoon repast. Your eagles do eat human flesh?'
The adrenaline rush was past him. Rann fought on nothing more than dogged determination. It wouldn't be enough.
He had no warning of the attack. One instant he faced the relaxed blonde, the next her sickle came spinning through the air toward his face. He dodged, hacking at the weapon as it whined past. The tip raked his right shoulder and left a burning wound. He felt warm blood pour down his arm onto his tunic.
The blonde's face twisted in rage at her missed stroke as she yanked hard at the leaden weight in her hand. She deftly spun the sickle back to her hand. Rann's blurred eyes were too intent on her. The big red-bearded maceman came for him. The prince's sword darted past the spiked ball and sheathed itself an inch in the man's left eye, almost by accident. His sword felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds now.
Bawling, the redbeard fell back. The blonde's arm moved in a blur. The chain of her weapon whipped about Rann's ankles. She uttered a cry of fierce delight as she pulled it tight, jerking the prince's feet from under him.
But even as he fell, the prince's right hand shot out to seize the chain. The blonde leaned forward to close with her intended victim; he pulled with a supernatural might born of desperation. The tattooed assassin lost her balance, fell. Rann served her as she had served his Guardsman, face twisting in a wild grin as he felt his curved blade penetrate her flesh.
But his life was done. The huge-shouldered man with the red curly beard loomed over him, face now a horrid mask, a single blue eye glaring wildly. The mace went high. Rann snarled in futile defiance as the spiked ball was silhouetted against the clouds.
The red-bearded man's head exploded in a welter of blood.
He fell heavily beside his leader's body. Rann lay gasping like a beached fish. He was aware of the distant sound of screaming, and another sound less identifiable.
Regaining his breath, Rann struggled out from under the blonde woman's body. Maguerr knelt in the street, clutching his midsection and retching dryly. Unsteadily Rann went to him and laid a gory hand on his bony elbow.
'You have my gratitude, boy,' he said in a voice that hardly seemed to be his own. 'Don't feel shame at being sick. It happens often when first one slays a fellow man.'
Such tender words from the fearsome Prince Rann would have shocked any of his Sky Guard. Maguerr merely shook his head.
'N-not that, lord,' he choked. 'The geode communicator. Was – aggh, my stomach – was in tune with it. What happens to it… I feel.'
Numbed and slow to comprehend, Rann fell back a step. His bootheel crunched on a fragment of the geode which Maguerr had hurled to burst the skull of the red-bearded assassin. Maguerr screamed. 'Breaking! Gods, it's shattering me!'
Understanding the mage's plight at last, Rann leaped to one side, lost balance, reeled, and stepped on yet another fragment. The mage fell over with the wail of one damned.
When the bird riders arrived, they found Rann Etuul, Prince of the City in the Sky, Marshal of the Sky Guard and commander of all the City's forces, dyed dark red with drying blood and scrabbling on all fours on the Bilsinx backstreets, diligently searching for pieces of Maguerr's shattered geode.
CHAPTER FOUR
Boisterous merriment boiled and soared, filling the great audience hall of the Palace of Winds clear to the vaulted ceilings far overhead. The festive week proclaimed by Synalon in celebration of her victory over her sister had dragged into its sixth day, only to have its vigor renewed once more by fiat of the queen, in honor of the miraculous escape of Prince Rann from the High Medurim assassins.
Torches guttered in sconces, splashing orange light on walls and making the ancient figures carved into them seem to writhe in the grip of nameless, unsettling emotions. Captive fire sprites thrashed inside crystal bell jars as
