behind an ambiguously smiling crescent-shaped Man in the Moon mask. His robe and cloak were dark, and he held a black, knobbed staff in his pallid hand. Behind him, indistinct in the failing twilight, its shape subtly altering as it shifted from one foot to the other, was some sort of animate shadow. Shamur inferred that the pair were a wizard and his familiar.
'I imagine this is the fellow who attempted to gull you,' Thamalon said calmly.
'I deserve most of the credit,' said the shadow, and Shamur jumped, because the spirit had spoken in an exact imitation of Lindrian's labored, quavering voice.
'I did gull her,' said the mage, ignoring his spectral attendant, 'she just didn't follow through.' He turned his head toward Shamur. The gloaming turned the mask's eye holes into pits of shadow. She used his regard as an excuse to take a leery step backward. 'It's too bad you didn't opt to murder him in his sleep, Lady Uskevren. Then he wouldn't have had the opportunity to talk you out of it.'
'I must compliment you on your skill at chicanery,' Thamalon said. 'Ordinarily, Shamur is nobody's fool.'
'I suspect she enjoys thinking the worst of you,' the wizard said, 'and that helped.'
'Tricking us is one thing,' Shamur said. 'But how did you and your men get out here in the woods?'
'We tracked you,' the shadow said, 'veiled in Master's spells of concealment.'
'You see, my lady,' said the wizard, 'I made quite extensive plans for your husband's destruction. In addition to manipulating you, I put a watch on Stormweather Towers, and when you two rode out alone, we followed. And thank goodness for that, because this way, everything works out. While you failed to kill Thamalon, you did lure him far away from his retainers, and I daresay that my associates and I won't have a great deal of difficulty disposing of the both of you ourselves.'
'Your bravos could have shot us down as we dueled,' Shamur said.
'You mustn't get your hopes up because of that,' the magician said. 'I'm afraid that you too must die. It was just that I don't believe in revealing myself to an enemy unnecessarily, even when I hold every advantage. Besides, it would have gratified my sense of irony had Thamalon, who has survived the attentions of so many ill-wishers, perished at the hands of his own wife.'
'Who are you?' Thamalon asked.
'Lord Uskevren,' the wizard said in mock distress, 'you wound me. How could you forget-'
As the mage spoke, Shamur took a second subtle step backward, positioning herself beside the broken lantern. Nimbly as a juggler, she suddenly tossed her broadsword from her right hand to her left and kicked the lamp up into the air. She grabbed it, pivoted, and hurled it at a cross-bowman on the opposite side of the clearing from the mage.
By the time the missile smashed the bravo in the face, she was sprinting after it, and Thamalon, who had, Mask be thanked, reacted instantly, was pounding along beside her. But the crossbows! She zigzagged to throw off the shooters' aim, then dived to the ground when she heard the ragged, snapping chorus of the weapons discharging their bolts. Unscathed, she leaped back up, and another quarrel, loosed by a bravo who'd taken his time, thrummed past her temple, yanking at strands of her long, pale hair as it passed.
She glanced at Thamalon and saw that, miraculously, he hadn't been hit, either. Evidently, surprise and the darkness had spoiled their enemies' aim. He gave her a nod, and they raced on.
Though his brow was gashed and his nose, pulped, the rogue Shamur had struck with the lantern was still on his feet, and she was running straight at his leveled crossbow. She watched his trigger finger, praying that despite the darkness, she'd see it move. Then it did twitch, the weapon clacked and twanged, and she threw herself to the side.
The quarrel grazed her arm. Snarling at the sudden sting, she charged the rogue, her sword extended to complete the ruin of his face.
Eyes wide with alarm, he dropped the crossbow, scurried backward, and fumbled for the hilt of his falchion. Shamur would have reached him before he ever managed to draw it, except that two more bravos dashed in, one from either side, to intercept her and Thamalon. They too had abandoned their deadly but slow-loading crossbows in favor of their blades.
Shamur knew without looking that other bullies were also running toward her. If she and Thamalon couldn't break through these first three before the rest arrived, they'd be overwhelmed. She attacked ferociously, and her husband did the same.
The first opponent to engage her was a wiry, black-bearded man with a gold ring in his lower lip and a short sword in either hand. She feinted a cut at his knee and whirled her broadsword at his head. He parried and held her weapon with the blade in his left hand, then stepped in and stabbed at her belly with the one in his right.
Striking the flat of the short sword with her unarmed fist, she knocked the attack out of line, observing as she did that her opponent's hands and throat were tattooed with rows of overlapping scales. She chopped his throat with the edge of her stiffened hand, then shoved him away.
By that time, the man with the bloody face had his falchion in hand. She advanced on him, and he gave ground, evidently well aware that he only had to hold the Uskevren here for a few heartbeats until his comrades could dash up and take them from behind.
She cut at his leading leg, and he parried. She tried to dart around him, but he jumped in front of her and nearly landed a whistling slash at her face. All the wlule, she could hear his friends' footsteps thudding closer.
Then Thamalon sprang from the darkness. He'd evidently bested the ruffian who'd engaged him, and now he rushed at Shamur's opponent from the side. The bravo tried to turn and defend himself, but was a split second too slow. Thamalon's bloody long sword plunged into his neck.
The dead man started to fall, the Uskevren lord yanked his weapon free, and he and Shamur ran out of the clearing and toward the trees, into what had now become a black and freezing winter night.
Garris Quinn, a fleshy, sallow rogue with a pair of kid gloves tucked foppishly through the band of his copotain hat, watched flabbergasted as the nobles disappeared into the woods with several of the men under his command in hot pursuit. His slack-jawed expression turned sheepish and wary when he turned to look at Master. 'I guess they took the lads by surprise,' he said.
'I guess they did,' said Bileworm, leering. Actually, he thought, Garris had no reason to be afraid. No matter how vexed Master was, he wouldn't waste time chastising this lout and his underlings for their incompetence. Not while Shamur and Thamalon were running loose.
And the familiar was right, for Master merely sighed and said, 'Two of your fellows will stay near me to serve as my bodyguards. Someone must also return to the men we left with the horses and warn them to be on the lookout. Everyone else will help flush and kill our quarry. In an organized fashion, if you please.'
Garris scurried off to see that the wizard's orders were carried out. 'Organized or not,' Bileworm said, 'in the woods, in the night, our friends have at least a slim chance of escaping.'
'That's why I intend to arrange for reinforcements,' Master said, 'reinforcements who see well in the dark, and will materialize ahead of Thamalon and Shamur and cut them off.'
The wizard thrust the ferule of his staff into the frozen ground as easily as if it had been soft sand. Then, having freed both hands, he produced a tiny leather bag and a stub of candle from one of the hidden pockets in his cloak, held them high, and whispered an incantation.
Another voice, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, hissed a response, and power crackled through the air. A blue flame flared upward from the candle wick, and violet light pulsed from the mouth of the sack. An instant later, bursts of soft purple radiance flickered off in the distance among the trees.
Her heart pounding and the breath burning in her lungs, Shamur ran. In the clearing, dueling, her skirts hadn't especially troubled her, but now they seemed to snag on every fallen branch or patch of brush.
Even so, with her longer legs, she was keeping pace with Thamalon, and moving far more quietly as well. To her thief s ears, his every stride seemed excruciatingly loud, and she feared they'd never shake their pursuers off their trail.
Somewhere behind them, a voice cried out in pain. Shamur suspected that one of the bravos had tripped or run into a low-hanging branch as he plunged headlong through the darkness. A mishap, she knew, that could just as easily have befallen her or Thamalon, with fatal consequences.
