And something moved in the shadows above.
It was nothing Ellowaine had seen, or could put a name to. Just a sensation, a touch of breeze without benefit of an open window, a flicker of movement in the dangling cobweb. She froze, listening, halting her companion as he tensed to take another step.
Nothing. Nothing at all…
Except, just maybe, the faintest creak. It could have been the building itself, sighing and settling its aching joints. But so, too, could it have been the muffled protest of a floorboard buried beneath old carpet.
Weapons at the ready, Ellowaine and Quinran increased their pace, hoping now not for the stealth that the stairs had rendered impossible, but to reach the top before anyone could intercept them partway.
Nobody tried. They found themselves in a hall very much like the one below. Doors occupied the walls to either side. A few hung open, the wood dangling loosely from the hinges like hanged convicts, but most were firmly shut.
Again they looked at each other, then at the nearest door. Quinran shrugged, and Ellowaine made a flicking motion toward it. Hatchets in hand, she stood back, ready to strike as the corporal kicked.
Rotted wood gave way so easily he stumbled. A cloud of foul splinters wafted into the air, and the stench of mildew grew nigh overpowering, but the room was empty save for a splotched mattress and soiled sheets.
The same across the hall, and again in the room neighboring that. They were just turning toward the fourth door when Ellowaine drew abruptly to a halt.
"What is it, Captain?"
"Listen!"
A moment. "I hear nothing."
"That's just it!" She tilted her head, indicating the stairway, and Quinran understood.
Where were the sounds of Ischina and Arkur opening doors downstairs?
The corporal opened his mouth, but no answer crawled its way onto his tongue. They couldn't be taking a break, not so early in the process. Could they have run into trouble? What could have silenced them both before either could sound a whistle?
Ellowaine stood, undecided, but only for a span of heartbeats. Absently spinning her hatchets in small circles beside her, she stepped once more toward the stairs. "Watch my back."
She'd moved only a couple of paces before she realized that no sounds of footsteps followed her. Behind her, the door to a room they'd already searched slammed shut, hiding whatever lay beyond.
Of Quinran, or any life at all, the hallway offered no sign.
Ellowaine hit the door at a full tilt and dropped into a roll as it fragmented. Across the moldy carpet she tumbled, then back to her feet, blades at the ready.
Quinran crouched on the floor, holding one hand to the back of his head. A thin trickle of blood-not enough, Ellowaine noted with no small relief, to suggest a dangerous wound-welled up between his fingers.
For just an instant, she couldn't understand how the room could be empty. Someone had grabbed the corporal, struck him across the head to keep him silent, but where-?
To her right, nigh invisible in the artificial twilight, a low hole in the wall provided egress to the next chamber. She listened, but neither the thump of a footfall nor the creak of a board suggested any movement.
"Can you stand?" she asked softly.
"I can bloody do more than that." Quinran rose, lifting his sword from the floor beside him. "Where are the bastards?"
"Later. First, we're checking on the others."
The corporal frowned, but when Ellowaine headed for the stairs, he followed.
They bounded downward, at speeds one notch shy of reckless, and the steps unleashed a chorus of wails. It was easy enough to see where their companions' efforts had ceased: Just look for the last open door. Once they were off the shrieking stairs they slowed, progressing with weapons at the ready.
Only as they neared could they see the crimson smears leading into the nearest open room. They gagged as the swirling dust of neglect pasted the acrid and metallic tang of recent slaughter to their tongues, their teeth, their throats.
Ellowaine darted past the door, crouched low, and rose with her back to the wall. Quinran mirrored her posture on the opposite side.
One… two…
She spun through the doorway, hatchets whirling, the corporal at her back.
And all but slipped in the puddled gore. "Good gods…"
The mercenary was certainly no stranger to violent death. It was the swiftness of it all, the fact that they'd heard nothing, that gave her pause.
Arkur lay just inside, apparently slain by a single blow that cleaved him cleanly from right shoulder to left hip-a hideous, jagged mirror of Ellowaine's own sash of rank. To judge by the drag marks, he'd been attacked in the passageway and hauled messily into the chamber.
Across the room, Ischina sprawled beside the decomposing mattress. Her blade lay beside her, shattered into steel splinters, and little remained of face and skull save a dripping ruin of mangled flesh. Largely hidden by the carnage, a tiny weed grew through the buckling floorboards. It wore an array of needle-like thorns as a crown, several of which appeared to be missing. Ellowaine knelt and found them protruding through the leather sole of Ischina's left boot.
And Ellowaine damn well knew witchcraft when she saw it.
She opened her mouth to bark an order at Quinran, but froze at the gaping shock on his face. His pupils flickered wildly from side to side, and then he was gone from the doorway.
Ellowaine followed at a run, rounding the corner just in time to see him reach the building's front door. He hauled it open, and she clearly heard his cry of "Get in here!"
"Corporal Quinran!" Then, when he reacted not all, "Gods damn it, Corporal!" She reached his side and hurled him against the wall by his shoulders. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Need help," he wheezed, even as Corporal Rephiran pounded up the steps and into the building, seeking targets for his crossbow.
"My call!" Ellowaine growled, shoving him once more into the wall for good measure before releasing him. "Don't you ever countermand my orders without checking with me first!"
"Understood," Quinran whimpered.
"Arkur and Ischina are down," she told Rephiran. "Enemies still unknown. We-"
She whirled at the sudden thump, watched one of the open doors drifting on its single remaining hinge-and allowed herself to breathe once more. It was just a feral cat, tortoise-haired. It stood in the hallway, hissing at them, back arched and tail bushy.
From what was now behind her, where the last survivors of her squad waited, came a burbling, stomach-turning crunch. Again she spun, just in time to see Rephiran slide to the floor, brains spilling from his shattered skull. Quinran just shrugged, shook the worst of the gore from his sword, and lunged.
Ellowaine's hatchets rose in a perfect parry, catching the blade between them and shrugging it to one side. With the rightmost she lashed out, and the treacherous corporal sucked in his breath as he leapt back, dodging the hatchet with nothing to spare.
Furious at the loss of her men, shamed that she'd never suspected the traitor in their midst, Ellowaine shrieked, leaping at her foe over Rephiran's mangled body. Her hatchets buzzed from all directions, a swarm of enraged hornets with lethal stings. Quinran backpedaled, and only the unnatural speed of his desperate parries kept his limbs attached. His body and face flickered as his concentration lapsed, and Ellowaine realized that poor Quinran, the real Quinran, probably lay dead upstairs. Well, she'd see who she fought soon enough…
And then she could only scream, leg buckling beneath her. With a strength and accuracy impossible in any normal animal, the alley cat had come up behind and sunk its teeth through the leather of her boot, into the flesh and tendon of her ankle.
She toppled, caught herself against the wall, and looked up just in time for the haft of her foe's weapon-revealed, now that the illusion was fading, as an axe, not a sword-to completely fill her vision. She felt the skull at her temple flex beneath the impact of the heavy shaft, and then the pain, along with the rest of the world, went away.