“There!” Wurhi pointed to a golden sconce mounted above a flight of stairs, wrought in the image of a leopard with eagle’s wings. “This is it. We go up here, then along the balcony of the inner courtyard, and then take a right. That will take us to the stairs of Cas’ tower. We found it!”

“At last,” Kyembe heaved a great sigh. “By the stars, this place is enormous. I have walked in imperial palaces smaller and constructed less fiendishly.”

“Don’t get excited,” Wurhi began to scuttle up the steps. “Someone could find that body anytime now,” she waved him up. “Hurry! Hurry!”

“Right,” he nodded, padding quickly after her.

They’d made it halfway up when they heard it.

Bang!

A door opened loudly somewhere below.

“Murder!” someone bellowed. “There’s been murder in the kitchen! Intruders! There are intruders among us!”

“See!? Shit! Shit!” Wurhi swore. “We need to leave!”

“No! They will block the exits! We need to go up!” Kyembe drew his blade and started charging forward. “As fast as you can!”

Swearing again, she tore up after him as though the abyss itself chased her. The palace erupted into life. Doors banged. Shouts and challenges boomed through the walls in every direction. Bronze armour jangled as warriors ran through the halls. Wurhi fought against rising panic.

They reached the top of the stairs and sprinted onto the balcony.

“There! Thieves!” a woman cried from the courtyard below.

“Shit! Shit!” Wurhi screamed.

“Wurhi, down!” Kyembe cried.

They dived.

Whooshwhooshwhooshwhoosh!

Clatter!

A wave of arrows cut the air where the two had stood, but struck only the stone wall behind them. They scattered to the floor with bent tips.

“By the stars, they react quickly!” Kyembe cursed, crawling to the balcony and peeking over.

“What are you doing?!” Wurhi cried.

His free hand snapped into a fist. A sound thrummed the air, like a great breath being drawn. The ring upon his finger flared so brightly it stung the eye as he pointed it over the balcony.

Vrooosh!

A beam of hungry white hellfire.

It burst forth with a blast of furnace-like heat so intense that the air rippled around it.

With a sickening hiss and crackle like bone bursting, it drove into the chest of one of the half dozen archers below.

He had no time to even scream.

His bronze armour melted, then boiled. Yet, it could not pour onto his flesh, for there was no flesh left to pour onto. A column of white flame erupted, voraciously consuming him to bone and beyond in a blink, leaving only a cloud of white ash hovering above a puddle of bubbling bronze. Within the cloud, the spark of hellfire still burned.

It was not yet sated. Seemingly filled with vile sapience, the beam drove into the next archer in the line, who’d recoiled while crying out in pain, her skin scalded from the heat of her compatriot’s death.

She actually managed half a shriek before immolating to dust. Then it jumped to another victim. Then another. When its searing light finally winked out, four guards had been carbonized to dust. The two survivors collapsed, screaming in fear and agony. The residual heat had scalded their skin like boiled rabbits.

The stench of ash and bubbling metal filled the air.

Wurhi retched over the balcony.

“Agh!” Kyembe groaned.

Burns ate their way up the forearm from the hand bearing his ring, steaming even as they scalded further into his flesh.

“Your hand!” she cried.

“Hellfire is gluttonous!” his voice strained in pain. “It demands its price!”

He let his sword clatter to the stone and pressed his other hand to his wounds. A wan, golden light enveloped his fingers, cooling the flesh and sloughing off the burnt tissue for fresh new skin. “Though I can pay it for some time. Now find your feet, Miss Rat!” he picked up his sword and offered her his free hand. “Before others come!”

She snapped herself out of shock and grabbed his hand. As soon as she was up, they were running, but had to skid to a halt almost immediately. In the faint light, guardsmen poured from the passage at the end of the balcony while more charged in from the other side, trapping them.

“We have you now, thieves!” a familiar voice roared.

Wurhi’s heart stopped.

Captain Azar stepped from between her warriors, gripping her two-handed spear.

Her eyes held death as they glared from beneath her helmet. “You!” she looked right at Wurhi. “I remember you from the street this morning! So, you’ve come with your filthy, grabby little hands! Good! Maybe if we put up enough pikes, you wretched thieves will actually learn a lesson!”

Wurhi dragged her dagger from her belt, but her hand trembled.

A nasty smile took Azar’s face. “And you killed four of my warriors, wizard!” she jabbed her spear at Kyembe. “Your magic is fearsome, but I’ve dealt with your kind before! Get them!” she roared to her soldiers. “Before he uses his magic again!”

“Shit! Shiiiiiiit!” Wurhi cried.

With a mighty shout, the massed veterans charged from both sides.

Kyembe calmly raised his ring.

Vrooosh!

That horrifying, leaping beam of hellfire swallowed four more victims. They turned to dust while their compatriots flinched back in pain and horror.

“Advance!” Azar shouted over the din. “He cannot do it constantly! Reject the pain and fear or he will slaughter you! Do not give him time to recover!”

With shocking discipline, they shrugged off their reluctance and lowered their spears.

Kyembe grunted in surprise, his arm burning, but he had no time to heal it.

“If not by hellfire, then by steel. Come and die,” the Sengezian raised his narrow blade to meet the oncoming masses.

Wurhi, meanwhile, ran the hell away.

Diving onto the railing, she scurried on hands and feet until she reached a column. She swung her body to the outside and wrapped her arms and legs around it, shimmying up.

Kring! Tching!

Steel clashed upon bronze below.

“The little one’s getting away!” Azar cried. “Two of you get up the stairs to the next floor! Cut her off!”

Wurhi climbed onto the balcony above and grimaced. Earlier she’d worried about the Sengezian betraying her, but now, she was abandoning him to his death. It was shameful, but against two columns of armed and armoured warriors - three abreast and many more deep - all she could do was die.

“Sorry,” she muttered in half-apology, taking one final look over the balustrade to witness his final moments.

Her eyes widened.

Half a dozen warriors menaced the lone swordsman with spears from both flanks. Their weapons were far longer, and they had numbers and positioning in their favour. Meanwhile, he only had a narrow sword in one hand to defend himself, and no armour to protect him.

They should have skewered him a dozen times by now.

Yet, he bore not a single wound. His crimson eyes flashed in the dark while his lean frame moved like water around their thrusts. His sword deftly parried those few spear-tips that came close, and then he darted at their owners like a cobra, flourishing his blade with inhuman celerity. They flinched back, forced to cower behind their shields.

Quickly, their attacks’ well practiced timing fell apart.

Battle cries turned into cries of dismay.

“What are you doing?” Azar demanded. “Kill him!”

For a single moment, their thrusts slowed as they processed their commander’s words.

It was then Kyembe struck.

Snarling, he clapped his burnt hand around the hilt of his sword, then widened his grip.

The gleaming blade thrust forward. The hilt lengthened.

Wurhi gasped.

His sword became a long, ivory hafted sword-staff, easily matching the reach of his foes’ spears. Before they could process what had happened, he swept the blade, penetrating their front rank, slicing through the gaps of their helms.

Shriiiiiing!

Their faces were sheared in twain.

Blood sprayed as three guards collapsed, whimpering like slaughtered oxen. Kyembe’s white tunic was stained red from the mist. He quickly leapt at their stunned fellows in the rank behind them, sword-staff blurring, driving them back with a mass of rapid push-cuts.

As they flinched, he cut through the gaps in their defences and armour.

They fell by the rank.

“Stop giving him space!” Azar roared. “Close on him!”

Her warriors only drew back. The dead multiplied. None were quick to join them.

“You nameless bastard!” the guard captain hefted her spear and began to push forward. “I’ll kill you myself!”

“I am not nameless!” he roared back. “It is Kyembe the Spirit Killer who cuts you all down! Slayer of demons and warriors! Flee, if you wish to live!”

Azar stiffened, then threw her head back in laughter. “And I thought this night would be boring! I missed Kashta the Talon, but I’ll have you! I am Azar the Sting! Face me!”

He gave her a feral smile and lowered his stance.

Azar charged forth, the guards parting before her, and she made a tremendous thrust to his head. In mid-thrust, it dropped down to strike for his belly instead. He swept her blow aside with a slight knock from his blade and cut at her arms, but she blocked with the haft of her spear.

For a moment the two paused, glaring at each other past their weapons.

Then they went for each other in earnest.

“There she is!” a voice bellowed behind Wurhi, finally drawing her attention from the fight below. The little thief whirled to see two guards charging her from the western stairwell.

“Shit! Shit!” she cried, pulling herself away from the balustrade and scrambling to the east. A third warrior burst out from the eastern entrance, cutting off her escape.

“Don’t let her climb again!” one of the men shouted from behind her.

“Don’t worry, the little rat-face has nowhere to run now!” the woman at her front snarled, blocking the door and levelling her spear.

Wurhi skidded to a halt in panic while the two men closed from behind. “Shit! Shit!” Her dagger would be poor defence against three spears.

Still, it was either do something or die. Shrieking, Wurhi barrelled toward the woman at her front, and away from her pursuers. The warrior lowered her spear further to skewer the thief like a charging pig.

Wurhi threw her dagger at the guard’s head.

Her opponent slammed her eyes shut while easily knocking the knife away with her shield, sending it spinning out into the courtyard far below. “Bad throw, little rat,” the woman sneered.

Then she went blind. “Mmph!”

Said ‘little rat’ had thrown her cloak before she’d even finished tossing the knife. The larger woman swore, trying to extricate herself from the cloth and stabbed forward blindly, but Wurhi easily skittered beneath her thrusts, snatching the warrior’s short sword from its sheath as she went.

She gripped it in one hand and braced her other against the pommel.

Then punched it into the back of her opponent’s thigh.

“Aaaaaarrrgh!” the warrior bellowed as Wurhi’s hands washed red. The woman quickly lost her balance, and the little thief helped by slamming her shoulder into the toppling guard’s lower back, sending her stumbling forward. The protruding short sword pulled free.

“Watch out you foo-”

The guard crashed into her onrushing brethren, taking one to the floor in a heap. The other stumbled free, but Wurhi was already coming for him. She pulled out her water skin and, in one fluid motion, slashed it open and swept its contents into the man’s face. He swore and sputtered, his vision obscured for a moment. It was enough. Wurhi charged past his spear, leapt airborne and slammed her full weight into his core. She was tiny, but with him already unbalanced, half blinded and with full armour changing his centre of gravity, he was sent stumbling to the side. He hit the balustrade and dropped his spear to try and grab onto something, but it was too late. He careened through the air, clawing at it desperately while screaming.

Crunch!

Until he hit the stones of the courtyard.

The sounds of battle continued below.

“Agh! Don’t just stand there, you idiots, help me!” Azar frantically cried.

Wurhi felt a little surge of happiness. The Sengezian yet lived.

Shruk!

“Aaaaaarrrgh!” she let out a high pitched, inhuman shriek as a spear dug into her side. Hot blood poured down her body, and she turned to find the other man extricating himself from the tangle with the bleeding, dying woman.

“You bastard!” Wurhi pelted the short sword at him. Only halfway up, with his shield pinned beneath his compatriot, he could not block nor dodge. The blade hit him hilt first, breaking his nose. As he reeled back, Wurhi wrenched up the spear dropped by his companion with a cry of agony and stabbed through his clasped hands, deep into his face. With a snarl, she twisted. The man gurgled, shuddered, then fell to the tiles.

Shaking with pain, Wurhi touched her side and found it completely drenched. Her body felt cold. She’d seen enough wounds over the years to know this would be fatal.