and Escevar were dressed in quilted silks and wool, flashy and fashionable, but the veteran Vox wore workmen's clothes and a black bearskin cape, almost impossible to see. Frost puffing at every breath, Escevar hissed, 'We can-Look out!'
The towering Vox grunted and chopped straight down with his long-hafted axe. The blade skinned flesh and chunked in dirt as some animal, fast and low and heavy, slammed into the fightmaster's leg and knocked him reeling. Vox's elbow punched Tamlin so hard the heir almost stabbed Escevar.
In the vanguard, Escevar heard footsteps or hoofbeats pattering toward him. Then he was butted in the gut as if by a charging ram. Vicious teeth snagged folds of his doublet and ripped it clean away. The beast's breath stank like a cesspit. Escevar's exposed stomach felt chilled by the winter night, and the young man gulped, winded and worried: his skin would peel away just as easily. A dog's snarl made Escevar jump and cannon into Tamlin. Escevar jerked a leg more by instinct than training, and heard teeth clash in air. They needed elbow room to fight, thought Escevar, yet he and Vox had to protect Tamlin. A bodyguard's job was never easy.
Angry and scared, the young swordsman flailed steel in a windmill pattern. A leftward swipe of the smatchet struck nothing, but his long sword kissed flesh. Yet Escevar was bewildered: the dog-thing had leaped in, bitten his doublet, then leaped out of sword's reach in an instant. What kind of dogs were that smart?
'Let me fight!' Sandwiched, Tamlin couldn't even raise his sword. Stepping sideways, he picked up his sword tip to deflect an attack, then whipped his cape around his left forearm as a shield, forgetting he carried a smatchet, for they were newly adopted, the latest fashion in fighting.
Tamlin felt Vox's big calloused hand swish for his shoulder. Vox's idea of protection would be to mash Tamlin to the path and straddle him like a baby while swinging his great axe two handed at all comers. Tamlin evaded his bodyguard's reach. He'd outgrown that kind of protection, or so he hoped.
Crouching, unsure what to do, Tamlin waited for an enemy to blunder into his sword tip. Instead, silent and deadly as a crossbow bolt, a stinking dog-monster clamped onto his left arm wrapped in the cape. Tamlin whooped as he skidded on gravel and crashed. Yet even Tamlin, a poor fighter, realized the dog had jumped down from a tree branch. Maybe these weren't dogs, but flying-gargoyles? gremlins? what?
Winded by the wallop, Tamlin was dragged across gravel by his arm. Instinctively he flipped the sword toward his attacker, unwittingly saving his life. The dog had let go of the cape to snap at Tamlin's face. Scant inches from the young lord's chin, the dog's teeth clashed on the steel blade. Growls turned to whines as its muzzle was cleft to the bone. Tamlin almost urped from the slaughterhouse breath, and the dog dodged sideways. Tamlin's own blade whacked him like an iron bar on his thick velvet hat. Blood started from a nicked chin.
Disgusted by his ineptitude, Tamlin kicked viciously. His boot thumped muscle, but the dog disappeared in the darkness. Scrambling, with Vox's big paw yanking his shoulder, Tamlin gained his feet. 'Nine gates to the night! We're lucky-'
'They're all around us!' Escevar hollered. 'Stand back to back!'
Like dominoes falling in a line, growls and chuffs and snarls sputtered around the three nightwalkers. Then some unseen doghandler piped from the gloomy trees, a sharp whistle. With a collective roar, the dog-monsters leaped.
The veteran Vox swept his long axe in a sidewide arc that kissed half a dozen dogs with cold steel. Without reversing the blade, he slung it backward and was rewarded by the meaty smack of the poll spanking a skull and breaking a jaw. A dog skulked low, and its snaggly teeth penetrated Vox's horsehide boot like hammered nails. Vox tugged his leg back to keep the dog hanging on, then kneeled hard on its back. Slapping his free hand on the axe poll, he drove straight down at the belly and felt the blade bite deep. The salt-sweet tang of blood mingled with the beast's open-sewer stench. Another dog snapped at Vox's shoulder, but the big man wore black bearskin in winter, and the dog tore only the cape. Vox shot the axe haft into its gut so it flipped and slammed on its back, kicking and whining feebly.
Escevar and Tamlin, veterans of very few skirmishes, fared less well. A jumping dog snagged Escevar's woolen cape, then hung slack to yank the young man down. Escevar was choked by his metal clasps until the soft pewter snapped. The surprised dog toppled backward, cape tangled in its teeth. Stabbing wildly, the hired man punched a hole through the cape and nicked the dog's breast. Another dog clamped onto his left forearm. Razor teeth sheared Escevar's calfskin glove and ground the bones in his wrist, making him shriek. Frantically he hammered his sword pommel on the dog's head, once, twice, thrice, but it wouldn't let go. Pulled to his knees, Escevar knew it would rip his throat next.
Tamlin wished he'd paid better attention to Vox's lessons in swordsmanship. His cape was gone, ripped off by an unseen beast. Belatedly he remembered his smatchet and jerked it from his belt. Lacking finesse, he slashed the air with sword and smatchet, and hoped he didn't shear his own wrist. When Escevar screamed, Tamlin stabbed at the huge shape hanging from his friend's arm. The blade met flesh tough as rawhide, and for a second Tamlin balked, then shoved hard, leaning into the thrust. The sword grated on ribs, and only then did Tamlin recall a lesson: Never stab the ribs, because the blade might fetch up. Even as Tamlin remembered, the stricken dog dropped, the blade twisted and was trapped in bone, and the pommel ripped from his hand, gone.
'Drat the dark!' burst Tamlin. 'Vox will kill me!'
'Lecture you deaf, more likely.' Escevar hissed for pain in his shredded wrist. His smatchet dangled by a wrist thong. 'Tam, you saved my life!'
'Did I?' Tamlin was astounded. 'Oh, it was nothing, old chap, I-Ulp!'
For the second time, Tamlin crashed on his rump as Vox's brawny arm knocked him and Escevar sprawling. Tamlin glimpsed two huge shapes soaring down like catapulted boulders, then a silver gleam cut the starry winter sky. Tamlin gasped to see the fightmaster's feat, and thought yet again Vox must have orcish or ogrish blood to see in the dark like a cat. The two dog-creatures that had launched from trees were intercepted by Vox's silver axe blade. Both dogs were blown from the air by the heavy blade. Flesh sheared, blood cartwheeled, the dogs crashed to earth — Tamlin and Escevar were lifted bodily and shoved down the path. Vox couldn't speak, but his push spoke. Run!
Clinging together, the trio trotted along the slippery gravel path. When the way leveled, they pelted headlong. Ahead the path forked around a shallow pool flanked by upright columns, benches, and flowerbeds: a summer place for parents and nurses to sit while children splashed. In winter the park was deserted, and the wading pool eerily iced over, gleaming in starlight. Over their panting breath and pounding feet the trio heard more sinister whistles sound behind. They imagined the rapid patter of dog paws drumming the earth. Tamlin was just about to ask which fork to take around the pool when Vox stumbled like a runaway horse.
Knocked headlong, Tamlin and Escevar pitched over the pool's stone rim and slid on their bellies. Escevar hissed as his bare belly slithered across ice. Tamlin slapped down a hand to stop but still held his smatchet. The blade chipped ice, then grabbed so he described a wild, stomach-lurching spin. Flopping like a stranded fish, Escevar rolled until his sword hilt scratched a furrow with a teeth-grating skreeeeek! Both young men tried to rise but skidded and sprawled. Grunting, aching, freezing, they chunked weapons into the ice like crampons to drag themselves to the pool's edge.
A one-man army, Vox stood, back against a stone fountain, and killed dog-creatures. His flashing axe walloped a dog's spine, crippling its back legs. It whined like a puppy. A backswing belted a low-flying dog from the air, and the return arc slammed another's skull. Snarling and barking, more dogs surrounded the colossus, yet they were savvy enough not to attack. Tamlin and Escevar grabbed the pool's stone rim as Vox again raised his axe Whistles froze the fighter. Different, these tones started high and sank low. Instantly the dogs scampered away. Tamlin and Escevar squinted but saw no mysterious whistlers, only hunched shapes that galloped amidst dark trees.
Cat-eyed Vox saw more. Whipping his left leg forward, swinging his axe far behind, he slung the long weapon at a light-colored figure silhouetted by a dark trunk. Vox's companions heard the whap! of steel on flesh and a gargling cry. Vox was already running. Tamlin and Escevar raced after.
Vox hunched over a stricken man whose breath gurgled with blood. The giant fighter snapped his fingers. Escevar pulled a magic candle from a pocket and touched the wick to steel. The paper-wrapped tube flickered aflame, and Vox snagged Escevar's wrist to bring the light close.
'A hillman!' said Escevar.
'We're attacked by barbarians?' puzzled Tamlin. 'I expected plain-old city-bred thugs.'
Shaggy, cropped hair, a thick beard, and swarthy skin spoke of a lifetime outdoors. The villain wore a long homespun shirt and a laced vest with the hair still on. The hairy hide was a curious dark brown and thickened at his
