He felt a hot gush of blood as he drove a fist into the woman's solar plexus. She gasped, reeling back, threads of blood whipping from the dagger in her right hand. Kalam charged forward with a snarl. He closed and, ignoring the assassin's dagger, punched into her chest again. Ribs cracked. His other hand flat-palmed her forehead. The assassin sprawled backwards, landing with a thump on the roof. Her body stilled.
Kalam sank to one knee, drawing in gulps of air. “Wait, you said, daminit! What the hell's wrong with you, Quick?” He pushed a knot of cloth into the wound below his ribcage. “Quick?”
There was no reply. He tensed, then turned and scanned the lower rooftops. Bodies lay scattered here and there. The warehouse roof, where he'd seen two figures land behind their mark, was empty. Groaning softly, he sank down on to his knees.
With the woman's attack he'd heard something amid the flashing fires. A boom, no, two booms, very close together. An exchange of magic. His breath caught. Was there a third assassin? A wizard? Quick Ben had damaged this one, but someone else had damaged Quick Ben. “Oh, Hood,” he whispered, glaring about.
Rallick's first intimation of trouble was a sharp blow between his shoulder blades. The breath burst from his lungs, carrying with it the ability to move. His back throbbed, and he knew he'd been hit by a quarrel, but the jazeraint armour under his shirt had withstood the impact-the quarrel's spiked head had pierced the iron but had been too spent to push further. Through the thumping pulse in his ears he caught a pair of footsteps approaching him from behind.
From the shadows below came Ocelot's voice, “Nom? What's happening?”
Behind Rallick the footsteps stopped, and there came the soft clacking of a crossbow being cocked. Raffick's wind returned, the numbness receding from his body. His own weapon lay beside him, ready. He waited.
“Nom?”
A soft footfall sounded behind him and to the left. In one motion Rallick rolled on to his back, grasped his crossbow, sat up and fired. The assassin, less than fifteen feet away, was thrown back by the quarrel's impact, its weapon flying.
Rallick heaved himself to one side, only now seeing the second attacker well behind the first. The figure crouched and fired its crossbow.
The quarrel caught Rallick's upper chest on the right, then ricocheted up past his head to disappear into the darkness. The blow left his right arm numb. He struggled to his feet, unsheathing his knife, the hooked blade a blue flicker in the night.
The assassin opposite him took a careful step forward, then backed away to the far edge and dropped over the side.
“Hood's Breath,” came Ocelot's voice beside Rallick. He turned but saw no one.
“He saw my magic,” Ocelot said. “Good work on the first one, Nom. Maybe we can finally determine who these people are.”
“I don't think so,” Rallick said, his eyes on the motionless body. An incandescent shimmer now wreathed it.
As the body disappeared Ocelot cursed. “Some kind of recall spell,” he said. Suddenly the Clan Master appeared in front of Rallick. His face twisted into a snarl as he glared about. “We set the trap, we end up dead.”
Rallick did not reply. He reached over his shoulder, pulled out the quarrel and tossed it to one side. The trappers had become the trapped, that was true, but he felt certain that the man who'd followed him had nothing to do with these newcomers. He turned and gazed up at the roof where his follower had been stationed. Even as he watched there was a flash of red and yellow light and a double thunderclap, and in that instant Rallick saw a silhouetted figure at the roof's edge, defending itself from a frontal attack. The flash winked out leaving only darkness.
“Magery,” Ocelot whispered. “High-power stuff, too. Come on, we're getting out of here.”
They left quickly, climbing down into the warehouse court.
Once she had marked them, Sorry could find the fat little man and the Coin Bearer effortlessly. Though she'd intended to trail this Kruppe after leaving Kalam and Quick Ben in the hut, something had drawn her instead to the boy. A suspicion, a sense that his actions were-at least for now-more important than Kruppe's meanderings.
The Coin Bearer was the last of Oponn's influence, and the god's most vital player in the game. Thus far, she'd done well in eliminating the other potential players-men like Captain Paran, who had been the Adjunct's aide and, by extension, a servant to the Empress. And there had been that Claw Leader in Pale, the one she had garotted. On her path to the Bridgeburners, others had been removed as well, but only as necessary.
