Tasting blood from his split lip, he swept his gaze right and left as he sought any means of escape.
Upstreet spread the terraces, palacios, and gardened heights of those with enough wealth to enjoy the cooler breezes of the isle’s cliffs, leading up at last to the white castillion that blazed atop the Summer Mount. Guarded heavily, there would be no escape in that direction.
Nor downstreet. That direction led to the crooked alleys, whored corners, and dark narrows of Lower Punt. Safety never lay in that direction.
So, trapped in the middle, he faced his adversaries.
Bargo and Yorga.
The pair of bulky Ai’men bore matching tattoos on their shoulders. Two halves of the same slave ring. Once bonded and linked combatants in the blood circuses, they were now freemen.
Only their sport hadn’t changed.
Yorga fingered ebony guild beads woven into a lock of his mud-brown hair. Tavern shield beads. Marking him as a hired guardsman to the alehouse.
At his side, Bargo, the one still with his tongue, barked, “Goodly Master Rind don’t take to Punt scabbers crawling into his tavern a’beggin’.”
Tylar, his eyes narrowed, kept his post in the street, knowing better than to protest his innocence. He’d come to the tavern with two brass pinches, plenty for a pint. But it seemed he had chosen the wrong tavern. He knew better than to risk the establishments of the high city. This wasn’t his place. Yet sometimes he forgot himself. Sometimes he simply sought some memory of a different life.
He shut out such thoughts and crouched on the cobbles as a warm black rain misted from the dark skies. It was not the pleasant, cleansing downpour of a true storm, but more of a fog that trapped the day’s heat and held it to the islands.
Still, it wasn’t the weather that pebbled Tylar’s brow with sweat and made his ragged clothes suddenly seem too tight.
Yorga balled up a fist, and a garbled sound flowed from his scarred throat. Laughter.
The pair of Ai’men strode out from under the creaking sign of the Wooden Frog. Tylar was to be their amusement this night.
Yorga came first, all fist and muscle. Little finesse. But skill was not needed against Tylar-at least not any longer. Once a Shadowknight, Tylar previously could have taken both with hardly a wind.
But the Graces had been stripped from him, along with rank and title. Additionally, the empty vessel left behind had been broken by a half decade spent in the slave rings of Trik. His sword arm was a callused club, numb from the elbow down. His legs had fared no better-one knee was a knot of locked bone from an old hammer blow, the other slow and painful. Even his back was crooked, tightened by scars from the whip.
He was no knight.
Not any longer.
Yet his Shadowmaster at Tashijan had taught him not to depend on the Graces. A cuff usually accompanied his instructor’s gruff words: Remember, the deadliest Grace comes not from a God, but from the heart and mind of a cornered man.
It seemed a small lesson compared to the size of the combatants here.
The hulking Yorga, bare chested and sweating of ale, outweighed Tylar by half.
“When we’re done with you in the streets,” the Ai’man warned, roughly grabbing his crotch, “we’re going to finish you in the alley. We always wanted to bugger a Shadowknight.”
Tylar narrowed one eye. Finally it was clear why these two had chosen to harangue him. It wasn’t his shabby attire, nor even his broken form. It had been the stripes tattooed on the sides of his face, running in jagged lines from the outer corner of each eye to ear, heralding his former rank, forever marking him. Three stripes. One for page, one for squire, one for vowed knight. What he had once borne with pride was now a mark of disgrace.
A fallen knight.
He kept the stripes hidden as much as possible, letting his black hair grow long and ragged, hanging over his storm-gray eyes. He kept his head bowed away from the sight of others.
Still, anger burned deep behind his ribs, a fire that never dampened. Though it might smolder to embers, it was always there. Always ready to flare.
Yorga lunged an arm at him, meaning to grab a fistful of hair.
A mistake.
Tylar rocked out of the way, pivoting on his clubbed arm. He lashed out with his other, swiftly, bringing his elbow around to strike the bridge of Yorga’s nose as he leaned down.
Bone crushed.
Tylar didn’t feel it-but he heard it, along with the howl that followed. It wasn’t a cry of pain so much as outrage. Yorga lurched backward, blood spraying from both nostrils.
Bargo roared, coming around his partner’s side.
Tylar rolled to his scarred back, kicking out with his legs. He knew where to strike. The heels of his boots smashed into the larger man’s knees. Bargo’s legs flew out from under him. He toppled forward, toward Tylar, arms outstretched, face a mask of rage, spittle flying.
Tylar, still on his back on the cobbles, rolled to the side, wrapping himself in his tattered cloak. Bargo crashed to the stones beside him, landing as Tylar had a moment before, face-first.
But the slave fighters knew how to work together.
Yorga’s fingers clamped onto Tylar’s ankle. With blood flecking from his snarled lips, Yorga hauled Tylar toward him. As a squire, Tylar had once fallen off his horse, tangling a boot in the stallion’s stirrup, and had been dragged behind the beast. Yorga was stronger.
With a grunt, Tylar flipped from his back to his stomach. The Ai’man had a grip on his mangled leg, the one with the frozen knee. It was like holding a bent shepherd’s crook. The twisting forced Yorga to loosen his grip, lest his own wrist be broken.
Partially free, Tylar slammed his boot heels together, catching three of Yorga’s fingers between them. Yorga half-lifted Tylar and tossed him away.
He rolled on a shoulder and allowed the momentum to put distance between himself and his attackers. He stopped in a half crouch, back to his enemies, glancing over his shoulder. He ached everywhere, his small reserves of strength ebbing.
Yorga helped up Bargo. Fire burned in both men’s eyes. Tylar had caught them by surprise. That was over. Together the Ai’men approached, stepping to either side to flank him.
“Hold!” The voice froze them all.
It came from farther up the street.
Bargo and Yorga parted to reveal a single figure in a black surcoat trimmed in silver, with a matching cloak, standing still. No chain, no armor, no shield. Only a sheathed sword hung at his waist. The black diamond on the hilt’s pommel glowed with its own light. That was all the protection needed here. The figure had been blessed in Grace.
A Shadowknight.
The same light from the diamond shone in the eyes of the warrior.
Tylar could not match that gaze. He turned askance.
A wind caught the edge of the knight’s cloak, willowing it out. Maybe it was a trick of moonlight, but as the cloak swept across the knight’s form, darkness consumed the figure, vanishing him half-away.
Tylar knew it was not a trick of the light… but a blessing of shadow. The Grace of such knights: to move unseen, to shirk into darkness and away. At night, there was no greater foe.
Bargo and Yorga knew this and bowed out of the way, heads lowered, backs bent. Yorga dropped to a knee as the knight stepped past him.
“What is the mishap here?” the knight asked, his heavy gaze settling on Tylar.
Rather than looking up, Tylar maintained a focus on the knight’s boots. There was much to tell from a man’s boots. Calfskin and mullerhorn. Fine tooled leathers from the Greater Coast. Worn well at the arch from riding hundreds of reaches in the stirrup. Since none of the Summering Isles were more than five reaches across, the knight must be an outsider to this sea-locked realm. Perhaps a blessed courier from another god-realm. Or perhaps a new conscript called in service to the god here, Meeryn of the Summering Isles.
