Chapter Twenty-Nine—A Change of Direction

They both turned to the disturbance where the guards were coming up at. Shiro ran to the other side of the sitting room where they were entering the door.

The first man swung his blade and Shiro jumped back, dodging the blow. Then he crossed blades with the man, cutting his arm. Jerking back with a loud cry, he dropped his scimitar. It clattered loudly across the marble floor.

Shiro was going to finish him, but decided to punch the man in the face instead, the dribbling blood from the guard’s arm spraying across the floor as he flailed into the tiles.

As Shiro looked up Ali was finishing his foe in a spray of blood.

“Shiro!” Ali exclaimed. “The lamp. What is happening?”

“I can’t touch it,” he said.

“Then we need to leave and—“

“No!” Shiro cried. “I can’t leave her here!”

Another man burst into the room screaming and swinging his blade. Ali jumped back and Shiro came in close, shunted his blade to the side and then dragged his sword across the man’s chest.

Ali came in and finished him off with a heavy two-handed strike to the chest.

Shiro jumped toward the lamp, sliding across the tiles and through the blood. He put out his hands to grab it, but just before touching it he halted.

He slammed his fists on both sides. “Jessamine!”

“Shiro!” Ali called.

“Jessamine, why won’t you answer me?!”

Ali screamed angrily and started grunting with each swing of his blade as he fought another guard who had come up the stairs.

On his hands and knees, and now covered with blood, Shiro reluctantly left the lamp to join Ali at the stairs.

He intervened, taking their opponent in the back with his sword. The man fell quickly, but as he slumped to the floor that mage from before appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Look out!” Ali called.

Something cracked.

Shiro’s body moved and he wondered if he had gotten hit as he rushed the mage, taking him across the neck with his katana and spilling his blood out over the stairs bellow him.

And then the pain flared.

“Gah!” he cried out, grasping at the left side of his chest where a spot of new blood appeared and began to spread.

“Shiro!” Ali screamed. “Shiro! Are you all right? Are you hit?” He came rushing into Shiro’s space. “That bastard hit you with his magic!”

“Mmm,” Shiro groaned. “I know.”

“We need to leave, Shiro.”

“Hnng!” he grunted. “I—I know.”

“Come on!” he picked Shiro up and slung his good arm over his shoulder. “We have to… get you—“ He had started to bring Shiro to the door where they could get out over the top of the veranda and then take the rope over the wall, but Ali stopped short when the man behind them spoke.

“Do not go any further.”

Shiro’s eyes widened in recognition of that deep voice. They turned around, Shiro pushing his hand into his chest to keep from bleeding.

Standing before them was the tall and muscular adventurer known as the Black Cobra, the famous monster hunter, loot collector, tracker—and now mercenary.

“Shiro,” Ali said.

“Yes?”

“This isn’t supposed to happen, my friend. This is camel shit.”

The Black Cobra actually smiled at that.