The door burst inwards with a crash against the wall, sending out a puff of chalky plaster. Nico's body clenched with the sudden shock of it. He opened his mouth, perhaps to shout something, perhaps simply to gasp. Instead he found the strangest of things occurring: time slowed for him, hovering on the edge of that first instant.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ash's hand reach for the blade by his side. But Nico knew that it would encounter only emptiness. The sword was stowed in a canvas roll beneath the bed, where he had replaced it earlier after his return. In the doorway, he saw the white press of Acolytes as they rushed through it one at a time. Their robes seemed caught in mid-motion, like a painting, the folds in them given depth with shadows and highlights, the curious silk patterns in the cloth shimmering in the light. He saw the naked length of steel in the grip of the foremost man, brandished like an extension of his arm. An oily sheen ran along the blade, sea blue, corn yellow, moist-earth brown; while a reflection of the gaslight shone close to the hilt, like a miniature sun. He saw the man's mask, and how its many apertures were in deep blackness save for the whites of his eyes – fixed now on the old farlander squatting on the floor, caught unarmed and unawares.
And then time whiplashed back to normal, and all was chaos and a great roar was filling Nico's ears, shocking the senses from him further, and he realized that Ash was the source of it, still squatting there and doing the only thing possible as the lead Acolyte lunged at him with his blade.
It was a primal shout, like nothing Nico had ever heard before, like nothing he would ever have thought possible from a human throat. It was shaped and directed with such commanding force that Ash's attacker was stunned for a moment, and dropped the weapon clean from his hand as though it had turned red hot.
It was enough to give Ash the second that he needed to jump up and grab the only loose furniture in the small room. A chair. He swung it full-force into the Acolyte's face. Bones cracked behind the mask, and the man reeled backwards into those trying to push in from behind. The farlander charged into him, shoved them all back, with his own momentum, through the doorway. Somehow he got the door closed against their weight. He rammed his back against it, holding it shut.
'Nico…' he said with a measure of coolness that frightened Nico more than calmed him. 'Throw me a coin, boy, quickly now.' And he jerked his head to the washbasin, now out of his reach, where they kept the change needed to feed the room's various coinslots.
Nico scrambled down from his bunk as Ash fought with the door, which shook violently and tried to jerk him out of its way. 'Hurry,' Ash hissed.
Nico reached the basin. He fumbled for a coin, not seeing any, and suddenly he feared he had already used their last – but no, his fingers found one where his eyes had not, and he plucked it up, tossing it to Ash.
Ash caught it in one hand and in the same motion twisted and dropped it through the slot on the doorframe. He turned the key, and relaxed his stance only slightly as the lock clicked into place; hammering could be heard against the quivering wood, and Ash still pressed himself against it, clearly not trusting much to the lock's strength.
Nico took a pace towards him, then turned and took a step towards the shuttered window instead. He stopped there, paralysed with indecision.
Ash frowned at him just as an axe blade cut through the door beside the old man's head, spitting a shower of bright splinters. 'The window, boy. The window!'
Nico didn't have to be told twice. It was their only way out. He rushed over and pushed at the shutters… except they didn't open, and refused to budge in his hands. They required a coin.
Nico cursed as he again fished in the sink for another one, though this time he knew he had used them all.
He turned to Ash blindly, wringing his hands, too panicked to think straight.
'The purse!' Ash hollered. 'There! On the bed!'
Sure enough, when Nico fumbled open the purse he found a quarter amongst the other coins, and he took it to the coinslot, and tried inserting it with shaking fingers into the hole; but then he fumbled and dropped it, and had to chase after the thing as it rolled back across the room all the way to Ash's feet.
Ash shouted something he didn't hear. Nico scooped up the coin and returned to the window frame. His aim was truer this time and the quarter rattled out of sight. Nico forced the shutters open. He took a vigorous breath of air. Outside it was dark and thick with fog. He stuck his head out to look down at the alley some four floors below. He couldn't see any way down, no fire escapes or nearby drainpipes.
'We're trapped!' he cried, and leaned his head back inside just as something shattered against the frame. He stared at the broken end of a crossbow bolt as it clattered off the sill. Someone was shooting down at him from the opposite roof.
Nico scrambled back from the window.
Ash was shouting something about making a jump for it to the window opposite. The window in question was shuttered closed – and in a building a good seven feet away. Nico knew he would never have it in him to try such a leap.
'Nico!' roared his master, and Nico looked back to see the door was beginning to come apart around him, the axe blade chopping the planking loose.
He regained his feet, discovered that he had grabbed the fallen chair in his hands. He ran for the window and tossed the chair out into the night. The fog swirled in its wake as it crashed against the shutters on the opposite side. 'Open up,' he yelled after it, hanging back cautiously from the window. 'Open up!'
The shutters parted just enough for a face to peer out. Nico saw an old man squinting across at him. It was the same old fellow he had seen on his first day here, constructing things from matchsticks.
'Please,' Nico shouted. He snatched up the money purse. With a heave, he tossed it across the alley and in between the shutters into the old man's room. 'Take it!' he told him.
The shutters closed firmly once more. Nico almost sobbed, though, in truth, part of him was greatly relieved. Another crossbow bolt shattered the frame an inch away from his hand. He darted further back into the room.
Suddenly the opposite shutters opened wide. The old man grinned a toothless grin and beckoned with one hand. Then shuffled aside to make room.
Nico's stomach dropped away. He thought of making that leap. It brought memories of his fall back in Bar-Khos, when he had pitched from the roof of the taverna. It was not the fall itself he recalled so vividly, because he had never been able to remember it much; it was the moment before he fell, when he had slid towards the edge and then hung there for an instant, scrabbling for a hold that never came to hand.
He could see Acolytes' masks through the widening gaps in the door now, and Ash risking his neck with every chop of the axe that came through it.
'I can't do it,' Nico told him.
Ash said nothing for a moment but, with the deepest understanding, he glowered. 'Our blades then. Throw our blades across.'
Nico frowned, but he did as he was bidden. He turned his back and scrabbled under the bed for their weapons, dragging the canvas rolls out into the light. He made for the window and tossed them across to the room opposite.
He failed to hear Ash approach from behind – the destruction of the door was too loud for that. It was a surprise then when the old man dragged him from the window back towards the door, or what was left of it, and even more of a surprise when he picked Nico up by the seat of his pants and the scruff of his neck. He growled some farlander words of encouragement and charged for the window, with Nico yelling and flapping his arms as Ash swung him hard and sent him sailing out into clear space.
Nico arced across the alleyway. For an instant, he even thought he was going to make it.
He didn't. The opposite window rose away from him before he could reach it, and all of a sudden there he was again, back in that nightmare moment he had feared most of all, falling fast to his death.
This time though, with sweet mercy, his outstretched hands clipped against something and managed to grab hold. It was the jutting windowsill, and he swung with a hard shock into the wall, and hung there by his fingertips, his bare toes scrabbling for a purchase against the coarse brickwork.
He glimpsed Ash leaping across the same space above his head, his cloak flapping as a flying bolt just missed him, diving headfirst into the room. And then he was there at the window, yanking Nico up and inside.
Nico lay panting on the floor. The old match man leered down at him, his gums chopping in excitement, as he sat on a bunk beside a replica ranch house built of matchsticks – and entirely ignored by Ash, as the Rshun kicked open the canvas roll to unfold across the floor, before he yanked out their two sheathed blades. He tossed Nico his sword as he struggled up from the floor, levelled his own just as the first Acolyte leapt through the window behind them.
