Sentinelspire - Mark Sehestedt [115]
"Get up," said Dayul, "or I'll kick in your ribs right there."
Lewan took a deep breath and began to push himself back to his feet. He didn't even have a knife. The hammer and bow had been his only weapons, and they had been taken from him with ease. He knew that any one of these men could best him easily. They were trained assassins. Out in the wild with a bow, Lewan might have stood a chance. Here, outnumbered in the dark, the best Lewan could hope for was to take his beating and sneak away once they'd finished with him. He stood up.
"Leave him alone!" Ulaan cried.
"Quiet!" The man holding her yanked her arm.
Ulaan twisted in his grasp and slammed the heel of her hand into the man's nose. Lewan heard a crunch as his nose shattered, but he kept his grip on Ulaan. She used it, pulling him close. In three quick motions her hand shot forward, grabbed the man's knife from his sheath, and plunged it into his side just above his belt. He screamed, releasing her, and fell back.
Ulaan turned and dropped into a practiced fighting stance, the bloody knife in her hand. She glanced at Dayul, then fixed her gaze on the leader. "I serve the Lady Talieth," she said. "You fools are interfering with her orders. Dayul, you will apologize to Lewan, then Master Lewan and I will leave. Anything else, and I'll kill you all. Right here. Right now."
The man she'd stabbed was pushing himself up with one hand, the other grasping his side. Blood leaked between his fingers, and his face was a grimace of pain. "You're no servant girl."
"I serve the Lady Talieth"-Ulaan gave Lewan a look full of apology -"in many ways."
"You're one of her personal blades," said Dayul.
"I am." She gave a curt nod but did not relax from her fighting stance. "Which means I don't give idle threats. Dayul, if the next words out of your mouth are anything but an apology, you are a dead man."
Dayul stood before Lewan. He looked down on Lewan, saying nothing, and Lewan could read the reluctance in his stiff stance. But there was fear as well. Now the only question was whether the fear would win out in the man's mind-or his pride.
Behind Dayul was only the darkness between two buildings. The man took a deep breath, but before he could speak, the darkness behind him took form and struck. Whatever it was, the dim light revealed no features other than a slight green sheen. It grabbed Dayul's cloak and pulled with such force that the clasp snapped and the heavy cloth flew away, pulling Dayul onto his back. The man cried out as his injured arm hit the ground, then it turned into a full-throated scream as hands reached out from the darkness and pulled him in.
"What-?" said the man Ulaan had stabbed. At the same time their leader said, "Inside! Get inside!"
Lewan turned, intending to grab Ulaan and run, but what he saw stopped him. Dark shapes, vaguely humanlike but moving with grace and dexterity beyond any human, were scuttling down the brass pillars of the building-some of them head first, clinging to the wet metal like spiders.
The stabbed man pushed himself to his feet. "What are they? Gods, Weilus, what are they?"
But Weilus-the leader who'd been doing most of the talking-turned and ran, heading for the hedge that marked the boundary to the garden where only days before Lewan and Talieth had seen Sauk and his men gathering the remains of slaughtered assassins.
"Weilus!" the guard called, but Weilus didn't even make it halfway. A half-dozen of the shapes charged him, quick as leopards, and the man went down screaming.
Ulaan ran to Lewan's side. She still had the bloody knife in her hands, but she looked up at him, fear in her eyes, and said, "I… I'm sorry, Lewan. I-"
"Later."
The two remaining guards stood back to back, their eyes wide, their blades trembling in their hands. "What do we do?" said Ulaan.
Lewan looked around. He could not make out any distinct features on the creatures, just a vague glimmer of green where the light reflected off them, and eyes that burned with a cold light. He stooped to retrieve the bundle