Close on her heels Batsen sent another flaming bolt after her. The blast knocked Gabriella off her feet and she rolled, managing to keep a hold of her sword.
Batsen called upon the air to form another fireball and hurled it with perfect accuracy.
A fist-sized globe of red flame hit Gabriella between the shoulder-blades. She arched her back under the impact and Batsen, for the first time in years, felt something. He felt utter, uncomprehending, astonishment as she turned round.
Her hair floated around her head as if lifted by a breeze and worms of light wriggled in the folds of her armour.
She didn't die screaming, with smoke curling from her lungs as they burned.
She didn't even fall.
She yelled, not in pain, but in pure primal anger and ran at Batsen, swords raised high. Batsen, astounded, called upon the shadows to hide him and darted aside. Unbelievably, she followed right after him.
Now Batsen could feel something. It was fear, thick and cloying, and filling his head to the point where he couldn't think.
Terrified, he gathered the air around him, thickening it so that it would cup him and carry him up on to the roof of the nearest building. From there, he fled. Gabriella pounded after him along the street below, screaming with rage and loss. She shouldered citizens aside as she leapt for an awning against a shop front and clambered up onto a low roof. There she stopped. The man had disappeared. She could see several streets in either direction and he was nowhere to be seen.
Gabriella jumped back down to street level, caught her breath and all the desire to keep standing fled from her body. She slumped to her knees, too exhausted to keep in the sobs that her pounding heart and head were letting out.
As people came to see what was happening, she curled into a ball and cried.
Travis Crowe had woken to the sound of iron on iron and screams. He hadn't even realised that he had fallen asleep, though he had been bone tired when he sat down to take a few minutes rest in the stable.
He jumped to his feet and looked for his sword but it wasn't in the stable, so he grabbed a long, loose coat from a hook and went to search for it. He found it in the vestry, where had left it, and ran out into the church. There he saw smashed pews and shattered flagstones. On the floor was a charred corpse and he recognised by the mail and fragments of blue cloth — but mostly by the sword lying near it — that it was Erak Brand.
'Sorry mate,' he muttered, 'but rather you than me.'
He heard shouts from outside and ran to the door. He was just in time to see Gabriella fall, struck by a bolt of magical fire. There was a man there too, dressed in black. Gabriella, to his amazement, climbed to her feet and went at the man in black, who flew to the rooftops, where he fled.
'Batsen,' he snarled.
He followed Gabriella as she ran, only to turn a corner and find her sobbing on the ground. People stood around, looking concerned but at a loss as to what to do.
Cursing the Faith for not teaching their flock any practical skills, Crowe rounded on the nearest man.
'You! Help me get her inside the church.'
The man grabbed Gabriella's legs and Crowe lifted her by the shoulders. The two men carried Gabriella through to the Enlightened One's apartment beyond the vestry and lay her on the bed. Crowe and the shopkeeper then returned to the ruined interior of the church.
'What happened here?' the man whispered. 'More goblins?'
'No, this guy was human. More or less.' Crowe looked at the charred corpse lying in the remnants of a blue robe. 'Looks like you people need another Enlightened One.'
When Gabriella awoke she wailed with dismay. If she had died, at least she would still be with Erak, in the clouds of Kerberos. Instead she was in bed, alone. Summoned by the sound she had made, the door opened, and for a heartbeat she thought it was Erak and that she had simply had a nightmare.
It was Travis Crowe, more sombre than usual. He had let his white hair out of its ponytail and was re-tying it as he entered.
'Who dressed my wounds?' Gabriella looked around. 'And where is she.'
'You're looking at 'her,' pet.' Crowe said, with uncharacteristic solemnity. He'd never seen a Knight of the Swords blush before.
She scrambled to her feet with a snarl. 'How dare you!'
She reached for a blade that wasn't there.
Crowe spread his hands. 'Don't worry, Dez. You haven't got anything I haven't seen in a dozen whorehouses, all right? Besides, open wounds and flowing blood aren't my idea of a turn-on. Maybe there are blokes around who get off on that, but that ain't me.' Gabriella stopped looking around, and composed her expression, but her cheeks remained flushed. 'You've got nothing to be embarrassed about. Mind you, considering how much blood you lost, it's a good sign that there's enough left to reach your cheeks.'
Gabriella patted at the dressings with her fingertips, wanting to scratch at the strange sensations under them, but not daring.
'Painful?' Crowe asked.
'Not exactly, just strange.'
He nodded blandly. 'That'll be the maggots getting busy.'
Her gorge rose and her stomach clenched. 'The what?'
'Do I look like a Healer? I used some maggots to eat away at anything that might otherwise go sour. It's an old mercenary trick, but it works.' He waved a hand. 'Got a Healer in as well. He liked the maggots; says he'll take them up himself.'
Gabriella gritted her teeth until she thought they might crack. It didn't stop the pain that forced tears from her. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and saw only Erak.
She wanted to hit someone, or break something. 'Let me out of here,' she rasped, pulling on a surplice, but not so quickly that Crowe didn't notice the red stains beginning to show through her bandages.
'You shouldn't move, God-girl. You were cut up pretty good and that won't heal overnight. You need to rest.'
'No. Especially not here.'
'It's a church. You're a Sister in a religious order. Can you think of a better place?'
'This was Erak's place,' she said. 'Maybe it's one I could have shared with him in time, but without him…'
Crowe understood. 'Without him, it feels strange, not like any other church? It feels weird and somehow less than a normal church, yeah?'
'That assassin…'
'Batsen.'
'You know him?'
Crowe shrugged. 'By reputation, more than anything else. Have you heard of the Guild of Shadowmages? The old guild in Turnitia, I mean?'
'Of course. The Swords helped the Empire of Vos to smash it.'
'Yeah. You know why?'
Gabriella thought for a moment. 'It was before my time, but we were taught that they, or at least the Lord Defender, thought the Shadowmages were assassins and terrorists.'
Crowe nodded. 'That's what most people think of the Shadowmages. But it ain't true. I've known a couple of them and most of them aren't like that at all.'
'And even if that was the case, which I doubt, your point is…?'
He dug a small clay pipe from the folds of his tattered coat and lit it. 'Dai Batsen is the reason that most people think the way they do about Shadowmages.' He grimaced. 'Every nightmare story anyone ever heard about a rogue Shadowmages — and, believe me, I've heard a few — he's the one who the story is really about. He's a bloody one-man terror campaign. Pay him and he'll do anything to anybody, no questions asked, no morals or
