‘Move!’ shouted Pelyn.
They headed across the broad communal gardens, breasting through the thick bamboo edging into the back alley. Pelyn looked left and right. Men appeared right and sprinted towards them. She pushed Methian ahead of her. Their escape route would lead them back down towards the Glade and into the face of the men advancing up the Path of Yniss, heading for the centre of the city.
Six or seven men were behind them, losing ground but shouting for others to join the chase. Tulan led the way down the narrow passage between garden borders. Pelyn glanced up on instinct. Mages above them were directing the enemy.
‘We’ve got to find cover!’ she shouted. ‘Tulan, head for the fish market. We can lose them in there if we can make it.’
Tulan made the end of the alley and turned right, the others close behind him. They’d exited onto Keeper’s Row. It ran parallel with the Path of Yniss for a time before angling in to join it at the head of the Glade. From there a run north halfway back towards the harbour, and they’d find the fish market.
Pelyn glanced behind her. A mage hovered overhead. He was calling and gesturing. Men spilled out of the alley fifty yards behind them. The mage flew overhead, tracking their route. She saw him looking to his left and making another beckoning gesture.
‘Tulan. Watch left. More coming your way.’
She needn’t have warned him. Six more men ran from another alley to block their escape. Tulan slithered to a stop and drew his sword; Ephran came to his right to stand by him. Pelyn turned and drew her own blade, Methian to her left. Four against twelve with more undoubtedly coming. It didn’t look good. The mage circled overhead. At least it seemed he couldn’t do any other damage while he was in the air.
‘Keep talking,’ said Pelyn. ‘Keep moving. Don’t break the circle.’
The men ran at them in line abreast. They carried long swords; some had daggers in their free hands where others preferred to go two-handed.
‘Time for your revenge, Tulan,’ said Methian.
‘I hear you,’ said Tulan.
A shadow flashed across the facade of the houses to Pelyn’s right. She heard a mourning wail. Light sparkled on metal. The mage screamed. All eyes looked up. A jaqrui crescent jutted from his chest. His wings flickered and disappeared and he plunged to the ground.
Pelyn smiled at the hesitating humans.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘You’re in trouble now.’
Seizing the moment, Pelyn ran forward, slashing her blade across chest high. Her target saw her late, his guard only half formed. Pelyn’s sword dashed his from his hand. She balanced quickly and reversed the blade high across the man’s face, the edge biting deep.
Next to him, a second man dropped soundlessly, falling forward. A third followed, blood spurting from his mouth, the elven blade plunging into lung and heart. Behind them, Grafyrre spared Pelyn the briefest of smiles before launching a fresh attack.
‘Methian, help Tulan. We’ve got this lot,’ said Pelyn.
The men were in disarray, not knowing which way to turn. One came at Pelyn though his attention seemed elsewhere. Pelyn blocked the half-hearted strike to her face easily, stepped forward and punched her enemy square on the nose. He staggered back. One of his comrades called a warning. Another man fell forward, blood sheeting down the front of his armour.
Grafyrre bounced into the air, turned a somersault and landed legs wrapped around the neck of his next victim. He jammed daggers into either temple. The man collapsed. Grafyrre rolled backwards, landed on his hands and sprang back to his feet. Pelyn drove her blade into the last man’s gut, just above the waist where leather met leggings.
The man gasped and fell to his knees. Grafyrre wrapped an arm around his head and broke his neck. Pelyn turned. Three more men lay dead. Grafyrre swept up his weapons but made no further move to join the fight.
‘Leave them,’ he said to Pelyn. ‘It is under control.’
And so it was. Tulan battered his blade into the side of one, putting him down on the ground. One of two short blades held in Merrat’s hands finished him. The other stabbed up into the groin of a human knowing his time was done. Ephran took the sword hand from the last man. He whimpered, clamped his other hand across the stump and stared at the six elves.
Merrat ghosted up beside him. She spoke in common elvish.
‘Do you understand me?’
The man nodded.
‘Good. Then listen. This land is ours. This city is ours. We shall not yield it. Go back to your army. They will leave or they will all perish.’
The man started, amazed he was to be allowed to live. He mouthed words but no sound came. Ephran poked him with the blade that already carried his blood.
‘Run,’ he said. ‘Before we change our minds.’
Howling fear, relief and agony, he ran away, back the way he had come.
Pelyn turned to Grafyrre. ‘Where did you come from all of a sudden? Thank you, by the way. We were in a spot of trouble there.’
‘We saw the magic and the fires,’ said Grafyrre. ‘Katyett was concerned for your safety.’
‘This is the same Katyett who left the city a couple of days ago, is it?’
‘There is only one Katyett,’ said Grafyrre evenly. ‘And we have come to get you out too. We need all the Al-Arynaar out. Others are at the barracks. Let the city go.’
Grafyrre and Merrat began to move.
‘Let it go?’ Pelyn fell in beside them, beckoning the others to follow. ‘Why? What about the entire population? Men are slaughtering them. I’ve just seen it.’
‘We have plans,’ said Grafyrre. ‘And we cannot think to mount an attack any time other than the night. Not with mages able to fly.’
They ran across the Path of Yniss and turned west, heading out of the city in the direction of the Ultan.
‘What difference does the night make?’ asked Pelyn.
‘Men cannot see in the dark.’
‘Can’t they?’ Pelyn checked to make sure that Grafyrre wasn’t having her on. ‘Well. That’ll help.’ ‘Best way to deliver poison. Are you sure no one else has worked this out?’
‘Why would they? Thousands of years of bow skills have adapted well here on Calaius,’ said Auum.
Takaar shrugged. ‘We must adapt to our surroundings.’
‘And we haven’t employed animal poison either.’
‘Hard to believe.’
‘Not really. You can’t hunt with poison, can you?’
‘Lucky I had the time to investigate it then. Give this a go, anyway. And don’t breathe in through your mouth. Not a good way to die.’
Auum tied off the tiller and took the bamboo stem from Takaar. He looked down its length. Takaar had polished the rough inside smooth. The tube was about three feet long. Perhaps a little more. Takaar handed him a dart. It was made from the thick thorns of an elsander, which were particularly dense and sharp with small barbs on one edge.
Auum pushed the dart into the tube and put the tube to his mouth. He breathed through his nose and puffed the air out sharply through his mouth as Takaar had demonstrated. The dart flew fast and straight for about fifteen feet before dropping into the coastal waters of the Sea of Gyaam.
‘Hmm.’ Auum passed the blowpipe back. ‘Let down by its range.’
‘Let down by its user,’ said Takaar.
He loaded a dart in the pipe and blew it three times the distance Auum had managed. Auum raised his eyebrows.
‘I’ll keep practising.’
‘And imagine it tipped with yellow-back poison. Or a larger dose of taipan venom is very effective if you can pierce neck or eye, say.’
Auum tried not to look too hard at Takaar lest he slip out of this period of lucidity into one of the more negative and destructive moods to which he was prey at any given breath. Takaar had spent increasing amounts of time in what Auum had come to consider to be silent introspection. That wasn’t worrying in itself as it didn’t threaten the small boat. Other moods were not so passive.