hand snapping out to grasp the woman’s forehead and crushed it like the shell of an egg.
A cutlass struck her left shoulder, rebounded as if from dense wood. Hissing, Equity twisted round. Two swift blows broke the man’s neck. Scowling now, she waded forward. Bodies spun to her lashing hands. The screams were deafening-
And then the survivors were fleeing along the beach, their weapons flung away, and down by the water, thirty paces distant, stood four figures: a man, three women. Equity marched towards them.
Sorcery erupted from the shortest of the women. A wave of blistering cold crashed into the Forkrul Assail, driving her back a step.
One of the other women had drawn two short-hafted throwing axes and was fast closing.
One axe flew straight for her. She slipped from its path, only to grunt as the second axe struck her in the chest, its iron blade lodged in her breast bone. Agony ripped through her. The second wave of Omtose Phellack lifted her from the sand, flung her five paces back. She landed hard on her back, rolled, and then regained her feet. The bones of her chest plate convulsed, rejecting the axe blade, and she straightened in time to meet the attack of the axe-throwing woman.
Long-bladed knives, a blur of hissing blades.
Equity blocked the attacks, one after another, but was driven back, one step, two.
She awakened her voice. ‘
The woman staggered, and then, with a growl, she pushed forward.
‘
Blood spattered from her attacker’s nose. Blood blossomed in her eyes. She stumbled, then lifted her weapons once more.
Snarling, Equity stepped close and slapped the woman, hard enough to snap her head round. She collapsed in a heap. The Forkrul Assail stood over her, contemplating driving a heel into the human’s throat.
An arrow glanced across her left temple, scoring a red slash. ‘
The woman at her feet moaned, tried to rise. Exasperated, Equity reached down, picked her up and threw her into the sea ten paces to her right. She stabbed a long finger at the sorceress. ‘I will speak to you!’
The other woman with her shouted, ‘Then stop killing my crew!’
Equity ran a finger along the gash in her temple — the wound was already mending. She sighed. Her chest ached, but the bones had begun healing and the pain was fading to an itch. ‘They attacked me,’ she said. ‘I simply defended myself. Indeed,’ she added, cautiously approaching, ‘if I desired to kill them all, I would have done so.’
‘I see five bodies over there-’
‘As I said, I would have killed them all.’
The woman thrashing in the shallows was climbing unsteadily to her feet. Equity regarded her for a moment. ‘If she comes at me again, I will kill her.’ She faced the sorceress. ‘Make that plain to her — she belongs to you, does she not?’
The short, plump mage made a strange wiggle with the fingers of one hand. ‘I am hard pressed to keep her from carving your head from your rather bony shoulders. You certainly have a way with words, Inquisitor, but that will not work a second time.’
Equity narrowed her attention on the other woman in the group. She snorted. ‘It is said the Realm of Death is sundered. Do your kind now plague the world?’
‘I carry no plague,’ the woman replied.
The Forkrul Assail frowned. Was she a simpleton? Often, she well knew, the brain decayed irreparably in such creatures.
The man standing beside the undead woman was now staring at her with his one working eye. ‘Did she say y’got the plague, Cap’n?’
‘No, Pretty, she said you’re an idiot. Now be quiet — better yet, gather up the crew, now that they’ve scattered every which way, and detail a burial party, and all that other stuff. Go on.’
‘Aye, Cap’n.’ Then he hesitated, and said in a hoarse whisper that all could hear, ‘It’s just, this one, she looks like she’s got a plague, don’t she? All white and all those veins on her arms, and-’
‘Go, Kaban. Now.’
Nodding, the man limped off.
Equity watched the woman who’d attacked her set about retrieving her weapons.
‘Inquisitor,’ said the sorceress, ‘we have no interest in suffering your … adjudication. Indeed, we proclaim you our enemy.’
‘Is blind hatred your only recourse?’ Equity demanded. ‘You name me “Inquisitor”, telling me that you know certain details of local significance. Yet that title is a presumption. You assume that all Forkrul Assail are Inquisitors, and this is ignorant. Indeed, most of the Inquisitors we set upon the peoples of this land were Watered — as much human blood in their veins as Assail. We discovered a rather sweet irony in observing their zeal, by the way.’
‘Nevertheless,’ the sorceress retorted, even as she made imperative gestures towards her servant, ‘we must view you as our enemy.’
‘You still do not understand, do you? Your enemies are the Elders among the Pures, who seek the utter destruction of you and your kind, not just on this continent, but across the entire world.’
‘I am sure you understood why we might object to such desires,’ the sorceress said, and now her servant arrived, delivering into the young woman’s plump hand a clay pipe. She puffed for a moment, and then continued, ‘And while you appear to be suggesting that you do not share the zeal of your Elder Pures, I cannot help but wonder what has brought you here, to me.’
‘You have bargained with the Jaghut,’ said Equity.
‘They share our aversion to your notions of justice.’
Frowning, Equity said, ‘I cannot understand what value the Jaghut see in you, a silly little girl playing at deadly magics, and beside you a lifeless abomination harbouring a parasite.’ She fixed her gaze upon the servant. ‘Is there a glamour about this one? If so, it is too subtle for me. Tell me, Sorceress, is she Jaghut?’
‘My handmaid? Goodness, no!’
Equity’s eyes settled upon the ship in the bay. ‘Is he there?’
‘Who?’
‘Your ally — I would speak to him. Or her.’
Smoke billowed and streamed. ‘I’m sorry, what ally?’
‘Where hides the Jaghut?’ Equity demanded.
‘Ah, I see. You misapprehend. I struck no bargain with any particular Jaghut. I merely sacrificed some blood for the privilege of Omtose Phellack-’
The undead captain turned on the sorceress. ‘You did what? Errant’s nudge — that storm! You can’t-’
‘Necessity, Captain Elalle. Now please, cogitate in silence for the moment, will you?’
‘I am astonished,’ admitted Equity. ‘I did not imagine you to be so … thick.’
‘Thorns and rocks-’
‘You cannot bargain with Omtose Phellack — you are not Jaghut. No, you need a blessing, or personal intervention, and this is as true of a mortal as it is of an Elder God. That ship is Jaghut — its kind has not sailed the seas of this world for millennia. Where has it come from?’
‘From the realm of Omtose Phellack itself,’ said the sorceress.
‘No, that is not possible. Unless a Jaghut has journeyed into the warren — but no, there is naught but ice — yonder ship was built in this world. Do you see now why this makes no sense?’
‘Not just ice, apparently.’
‘You have seen Omtose Phellack?’
‘My handmaid,’ said the sorceress. ‘It was she who journeyed through the gate. It was she who entered Omtose Phellack and returned with the ship.’
Equity studied the woman with the bruised eyes. ‘Describe the place where you were, please.’
‘Enlighten her,’ ordered the sorceress when the handmaid hesitated.
