The man heard their footfalls, stopped and turned. The questioning look on his distinguished, grey-maned features mutated into apprehension.
Kutch stretched his hands placatingly, palms up. ‘We mean you no harm!’
Tensely, the stranger retreated a step or two, staring at them but saying nothing.
Reeth glanced around. ‘This isn’t right.’
‘What isn’t?’ Kutch asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘You have to know how to look,’ Caldason replied dryly.
Something fell into their field of vision, a blur of glistening silver.
The fraudulent bird they had glimpsed earlier descended with wings fluttering languorously. Time seemed to slow to a glacial pace as it came to rest on the stranger’s outstretched arm. There was a flurry of radiant feathers. The creature’s eyes, vivid crimson, fixed upon him.
‘Treachery!’
the bird screeched.
Then it raised its wings as though to take off. Instead it soundlessly imploded, crushing to a tiny ball of pulsing brilliance that immediately consumed itself.
Blinking, the stranger assumed the pair facing him were the object of the warning. He made to run.
‘No!’ Kutch shouted, still dazed. ‘We don’t want to hurt you!’
Caldason’s attention hadn’t been on the glamour or the stranger. He was scanning the doorways and stables. Face hard, gaze intense, he began drawing his sword.
Kutch noticed. He managed a puzzled, ‘What -?’ before he saw why.
Men were emerging from dingy stables and out of shadowed nooks. There were a good half-dozen of them, and if there was any doubt about their intent, the blades in their hands dispelled it.
All but one had a look Caldason had seen many times. The mark of predators. Street pirates. Men who killed for coin, or for the sport of it. The exception appeared to be unarmed and his garb was less martial. Unlike the others, he wore a cloak, and held a staff too short for a weapon, embellished in gold.
Fanning out, the brigands moved to surround the trio. The man Kutch and Reeth had been following seemed more self-possessed, but still suspicious of the pair’s allegiance. He looked from them to the encircling ambushers, then back again, undecided.
Ever watchful, Caldason reached over his shoulder and slowly unsheathed his second blade.
As he freed it there was a flash of fierce white light.
It lasted no more than a second but dazzled them all. Fiery motes in his eyes, Caldason found its source. The unsuitably dressed brigand had his ornate staff in a raised hand. He was pointing it at the elderly stranger.
Kutch cried out something unintelligible. Reeth saw that the stranger now stood unprotected. His buffer of magic was gone, the radiant bubble had dispersed.
A negating glamour. Caldason hoped they didn’t have anything worse.
One of the ambushers on the right began to move their way, sword raised. A bandit on the opposite side did the same. The rest stood their ground.
Caldason shoved Kutch hard, propelling him towards the stranger. The boy exclaimed, stumbled, almost collided with the old man.
‘Stay!’
Caldason snapped, as though commanding a dog.
Then the pincer closed on him.
He remained perfectly still, immobile as a rock. Kutch, watching fear-flushed, unbelieving, saw that Caldason’s eyes were shut, and that he looked incongruously serene. But that lasted only a second, before the waves struck.
A sword in each hand, he parried both incomers, side-on, blocking expertly to the right and left. Then he swung out and round to face the pair.
They engaged him again instantly. Four blades rent the air. Steel clamoured in earnest as the three of them enacted that lissome dance, old as malice, which could only end in death.
At first it seemed to Kutch that Reeth did no more than hold the attackers at bay. But he soon realised his error. Caldason was deploying a strategy. For although they attacked him with equal ferocity, his response was two-tiered. The man on his right he held off. The one to the left, he fought. As they jockeyed to challenge him, his blades flashed from one to the other; defensive to offensive, soft to hard.
When it happened, it was quick and brutal. From the storm’s eye, Caldason lashed out at the man he’d worn down. To those looking on it was as though he quickly wiped his blade across the brigand’s chest. But the gash was deep. It liberated a cataract of blood. The victim made a sound, part outcry, part groan of pain, and let slip his sword. He swayed, then fell, broken.
It was the only sound any of them had made. Kutch was struck by how strange that seemed; no words exchanged, no shouted challenges or muttered threats. Just silence, save grunts of effort and clashing steel. It seemed the assassins plied their trade gravely and had no need of discourse.
Now there was general movement. As Caldason took on his other opponent, a fresh brigand waded in to join the fight. And Kutch had his own troubles. Two bandits were coming towards him and the stranger. The last of the band, his magic-eating staff marking him out as a sorcerer rather than a combatant, held back.
Kutch and the stranger instinctively moved closer together.
‘It’s me they want,’ the old man hissed.
It was the first thing he’d said and it made the boy start. But Kutch had no time to respond. Their assailants were a sword stretch away and closing the gap. The stranger tossed back his cloak and jerked a pair of daggers from his belt. But he didn’t have the look of a fighting man, and their enemies had superior reach and numbers. The assassins smiled. Prickling with sweat, Kutch tried to clear his mind of all but the Craft.
Caldason was delivering a righteous blow when his third attacker lumbered in. The newcomer, full-bearded, beefy, swung a two-handed axe. Caldason avoided the stroke, flowing beneath it, and countered with a wide, cutting sweep. It would have ribboned the axe-man if he hadn’t tottered backwards from its path. In retreat he nearly fell across the body of the accomplice Reeth had killed.
The Qalochian’s other opponent was nimbler. He favoured a sabre, and came in swift and lean, swiping like a barbcat. Reeth dodged the pass and commenced trading blows. Then the axe-man rejoined the fray and it was back to hacking at both.
Kutch and the stranger eyed their circling foes and tensed for the onslaught. It came suddenly when one of the thugs lunged, targeting the old man. Showing unexpected agility, the stranger side-stepped the charge, and managed a curving slash of his knives in answer. That sent the brigand into retreat. But his crony, a scabrous, gangling individual, slid in to menace Kutch. The boy recoiled, all the while trying not to garble an incantation he was murmuring under his breath.
The stranger grasped Kutch’s sleeve and pulled him closer. As one, they backed off, the stranger brandishing his daggers at the advancing bandits as though they really were a remedy against swords.
They took three paces before their backs met a rough brick wall. Pressed against it, the stranger held out his knives in an imperfect display of boldness. Next to him, Kutch continued his muttered chant, and began to make small movements with shaking hands. The bandits gloated.
Abruptly, a swarm of minute lights materialised, like luminous grains of sand. They swirled about Kutch and the stranger, then as quickly vanished, replaced by a misty luminescence that girdled man and boy. The bandits’ murderous leers turned to frowns. Wary, they held back.
On the principle of downing the biggest adversary first, Caldason fended off the leaner of his two opponents and concentrated on defeating the burly axe-man, showering him with weighty blows.
Several were blocked, glancing off the axe’s cutter or its sturdy wooden haft. Others whistled close to the thug’s bobbing head. Then Caldason saw his chance.
The blow he got through was savage. It shattered the axeman’s skull, immediately felling him.