Osha skidded to a stop just out of reach.
Why was he wearing that strange cloak and clothing? Where were his stilettos?
“Release her!” he ordered. “Do you know who you assault? She is kin to the great Sgäilsheilleache.”
“That is why we take her,” a voice answered above her head, “and Sgäilsheilleache is great no more ... not after killing one of his own, a greimasg’äh more honored than ten of him!”
“We will keep her from the traitor,” added the one to her right. “This is the wish of Most Aged Father.”
Lost and terrified, she did not understand any of this. Who was this “traitor” they spoke of?
“Do not ally yourself with him,” warned the one holding her as his grip shifted slightly.
Able to turn her head, she glanced both ways.
Osha did not appear to know the other three, though all had their face wraps pulled down.
The one to her right bore a jagged scar from the corner of his mouth to his cheekbone. The one to her left, unlike most anmaglâhk, had his hair cropped short beneath the upper edge of his cowl. She could not see the one who held her, but judging by his voice above her head, he was quite tall.
She watched Osha, and his brow furrowed in the same confusion she felt. What could Most Aged Father possibly want with her? And who was this traitor?
“So the caste now makes hostages of the people?” Osha nearly shouted back. “Yet you dare claim Sgäilsheilleache has fallen from honor in upholding the people’s way in a sworn oath? You know nothing of what happened at his death ... liar!”
The girl’s fear only grew. She respected Osha, but her uncle had never finished training him. Osha was no match for these three ... but even so, he took a slow step forward.
He spread his arms slightly, as if daring the three to come at him, and the sides of his cloak fell from his forearms. Moonlight, or some lantern at the city’s front, caught on his left wrist. She should have seen a sheathed stiletto there, but instead ...
There was only the sheen from burns on his palms and wrists already beginning to scar. It must hurt even now, though he did not appear to feel it.
She saw something else—perhaps a pain that had nothing to do with flesh—beneath the fury in his eyes. She had suffered enough to recognize that.
“Stand down,” the short-haired one ordered. “Or we take you to have sided with traitors ... and we will kill you.”
“Kill me?” Osha repeated, his voice quiet at first. “Look in my eyes and see if that matters to me anymore. Release her. Now!”
A shadow rose out of the darkness behind him.
She saw it in the last instant only because of the pier’s lantern, and she almost shouted Osha’s name in warning. A scarred face with burning amber eyes inside a cowl appeared over Osha’s shoulder.
Brot’ân’duivé snatched the neck of Osha’s cloak and jerked him back.
The girl felt her captor’s grip tighten as he dragged her a short ways in retreat. The other two anmaglâhk shifted into readied crouches. But from behind the tattered and bloodstained greimasg’äh, a change in Osha’s face caught her gaze.
Osha’s plain, long features twisted in near hatred. He glared at Brot’ân’duivé’s back as if he might strike at the greimasg’äh first of all. Brot’ân’duivé did not notice and stood erect but relaxed, as if disregarding the three anmaglâhk before him.
“Release her,” he ordered, “and walk away.”
“On your word ... traitor?” replied the tall one holding her.
At the greimasg’äh’s silence, waves of sickness swelled in the girl. This would end in more blood and death—and Osha would not back down, either.
“Stand off,” warned the one with the jagged scar. “Killing you would increase our advantage in breaking the rest of your kind. But we are taking the girl either way.”
At first Brot’ân’duivé did not respond in any fashion. Starting with the anmaglâhk on his left, he looked slowly from one opponent to the next and finished with the scarred one.
“In the span of several nights,” he began, dispassionate and clear, “I have been forced to begin killing our own, something unheard of since the first of us took guardianship in silence and in shadow. I have spilled blood all the way to the chamber of Most Aged Father himself.”
He stood as if waiting for a response. His eyes flickered slightly, as if he watched for something, perhaps a move on their part, or as if he was simply noting their positions.
“Stained as I am in their blood,” he went on, “would your stains even be noticed among the others?”
The shorthaired one went for a stiletto up his sleeve.
Brot’ân’duivé lunged in one long step as his right hand whipped up, dragging the edge of his cloak. His opponent jerked backward at some impact she did not see. That anmaglâhk hung in stillness ... and then dropped to his knees.
In the blink that it took him to choke once, Brot’ân’duivé lashed his right hand out.
As if from nowhere, a stiletto shot from his hand toward her legs. She did not have time to pull aside.
She felt no impact or pain, but she heard—felt—the one behind her shudder. She began to topple as her captor stumbled and his weight came forward. She tried tearing away from his grip, but he was still strong and still on his feet.
A narrow white metal blade appeared out of the corner of her eye.
In the hand of her captor, it came around the side of her head and level with her throat, and she was too lost and frightened to cry out.
Another hand latched upon the wrist of her captor, and she later remembered seeing the shiny scars of burns in four lines.
Osha, his face in frightful rage, loomed before her. He wrenched the anmaglâhk’s wrist aside, turning the blade outward, and she saw Osha’s other hand thrust suddenly over her head with thumb and first finger spread wide.
The hand passed so fast that she heard the whip of air from his sleeve.
Her captor’s breath caught suddenly. As he choked, the stiletto fell from his grip. She jerked herself free, ducking around behind Osha.
The anmaglâhk toppled, holding his throat as he gagged for breath. A stiletto like Brot’ân’duivé’s was deeply embedded in his right leg above the knee.
Still hiding behind Osha, she cast her gaze about, looking for the greimasg’äh.
Leanâlhâm fell silent on deck, standing almost directly in front of Brot’ân’duivé now.
“The rest was all yours,” she said quietly.
She was right, and he knew it. Exhausted and drained, Brot’ân’duivé began again where she had stopped ...
As he faced his last opponent upon the beach, he whispered loudly, “One crippled ... one down.”
And the anmaglâhk with the jagged scar struck forward.
A stiletto passed a finger’s breadth before Brot’ân’duivé’s left eye as he lightly turned his head away. Even without a line of sight, he needed only the angle of his opponent’s arm and shoulder.
Brot’ân’duivé rammed the heel of his left palm into his opponent’s jaw before the blade withdrew. The anmaglâhk’s head snapped back. All of them were trained to withstand blunt impact so long as they survived it. At the crack of bone, that one crumbled upon the sand.
But then the short-haired man rolled to one knee and thrust a blade upward toward Brot’ân’duivé’s abdomen. He parried with his empty hand, deflecting the blade. In the same motion, his left hand came back, fingers curling in to pull the leather tie string at his wrist. His other stiletto slipped free of its sheath under the momentum of his arm’s movement, and the blade’s hilt hit his palm.
The short-haired anmaglâhk whirled around on his knee and came back for another thrust.