Clayton Emery: Star of Cursrah

The male assassin gabbled at his partner in thieves' cant, but the samira interrupted, "You gutter trash! You wouldn't dare kill me. If you're smart, you'll ru-urkl"

A garrote of braided camel hair looped around Star's throat. She gagged, gasped, and almost vomited. The cutthroat's coarse clothes rubbed her shoulder through her thin shift, then the garrote twisted as he lifted her off her feet. H[e hoisted Star on his back like a lamb, not caring if she strangled. The world dimmed for lack of air.

Footsteps pounded from all directions, but Star feared they'd be too late to prevent her strangling. Vaguely, through a red haze, she saw the female assassin snap a latch at the bottom of the sunken stairwell. She hissed for her partner to bring his burden, and Star was dragged halfway down the stairs. Amenstar shuddered and clawed wildly. Once these killers bolted that solid door, they might confound their pursuers long enough to escape-with Star either a prisoner or a corpse.

"Release her!" Amenstar heard Tafir shout, then saw the cutthroat lift her katar to fend off an attack.

Star wanted to shout a warning, but her wind was cut off. In agony, she saw Tafir leap clear over her head and down into the stairwell, obviously aiming to kick the female hatori's head off.

The woman dipped like a cobra and sliced with her curved dagger, and the knife sizzled across the hobnailed sole of Tafir's sandal. Scrambling, hands braced against the wall, the cadet poised on a step and kicked wildly to avoid the blade. Obviously, Tafir only needed to harry the enemy and block the door until help arrived. Through a fog Star saw panting soldiers cram the stairwell. Rescue was close, if only her throat wasn't crushed.

The stairwell grew darker, the light eclipsed, and Amenstar feared her vision was fading, that she was dying. Then she smelled smoke. Out of the doorway boiled black smoke tinged with green curls, as if the building were afire. From under the smokescreen charged more assassins like bees from a smoked hive.

Star couldn't track what happened next. Her captor, still with his death-grip garrote around her throat, booted her down the stairs against the oncoming assassins. The dark depths had to be a thieves' den. Star tried to grab someone rushing nearby, but the awful pressure on her throat made her sick, and she crumpled. Smoke stung her eyes, scorched her gaping mouth, and made her nose itch abominably.

The cutthroat shoved her downward. A thief banged her hip dashing one way, then thumped her again in retreating. Star wondered how her rescuers fared. Assassins, wrapped in gauze or light cloaks, flashed knives or hurled what looked like big copper coins-until Star saw a soldier's arm gashed to the bone. The coins were razor-edged quoits. The palace chancellor, who studied the methods of assassins, would find that fact interesting-if Star lived to tell it.

Darkness engulfed her. Dragged inside the doorway, Star had an impression of a narrow, low corridor, probably lined with murder holes. Tafir was down on his back, and her captor tripped over him. Was her friend dead? Would she to follow?

The black smoke suddenly parted like a sandstorm, and through the rent charged a big sergeant with a strawberry birthmark-Tafir's friend, Star thought. Rosey streamed blood from a dozen cuts on arms and hands and face.

Outraged, he roared, "Save her highness!"

The veteran threw a knotted fist, too fast to see, that whistled by Star's head. The man-killing blow crunched on something soft. Star felt the garrote loosen, and she yanked it free of her throat. Hard hands clutched her against a man's sweaty, bloody chest. She smelled wine and onions and knew Rosey had rescued her-a good thing, for her legs went weak as jelly, her feet too numb to stand.

Five stumbling steps brought light piercing the gloom. More hands caught and lifted her from the smoke that coiled like death's touch. Star's legs gave out, and her knees banged stone as she collapsed in the street, rubbing her throat and retching. Rosey hadn't followed, and Star wondered why.

Shadows flickered as someone hurtled over her head. Like sheep over a fald, five more bodies vaulted down the stairs. Star's spinning vision couldn't identify them.

Noise exploded from below: shouts, screams, a rampaging trumpet like an elephant's call. Forcing her eyes open, Star saw a woman in a blue tunic and kilt smash a spear haft against someone's head. On her breast was painted an eight-pointed star-Amenstar's own emblem. Her royal bodyguard had arrived.

The trumpet blared again, and Star cried for joy. As the smoke dimmed, she beheld a ten-foot monster looming over cowering humans.

The creature's upper half was a black woman with a fist-sized bump on her broad nose and breasts like watermelons encased in a harness of blue leather. From the waist down, extending more than twelve feet, was the street-filling bulk of a rhinoceros draped with a star-painted mantle like a tent. M'saba, formerly of the bakkal's heavy cavalry, was the biggest of Amenstar's thirty bodyguards. Seeing the rhinaur's savage fury directed at the assassins gave the samira a twinge of shame. She shouldn't have ditched her faithful guards just to lark with her common friends.

The smoke was exhausted. Amenstar's bodyguards searched the thieves' den while M'saba blocked the street in one direction and more guards blocked the other end. Captain Anhur, chief of Star's bodyguards, snarled, "Everyone lie down immediately or I'll personally ram a spear through your guts!"

Citizens and soldiers dropped flat. Some people were already down, streaked with blood, dead or dying or wounded. Some thieves looked like bundles of rags soaked in blood, so viciously had they been pounded and stabbed.

Yuzas Anhur crouched beside her mistress and gently offered a calloused hand. Still weak, Star rose meekly to distinguish friend from foe. Friends were hustled at spear point past the huge rhinaur to where the local populace goggled. Gheqet and Tafir went quietly. One by one Star tolled off the soldiers from the tavern, and they were also released. She felt a pang when her guards exited the thieves' den dragging two of the bakkal's soldiers by the heels. One was Rosey, slashed across the throat by a long curved knife, his blood redder than his birthmark. The man had given his life for hers. Star's eyes stung, and fat tears washed runnels through the dust and smoke that darkened her cheeks.

Star pointed out the assassins who'd initiated the attack, and Captain Anhur had them bound hand and foot and gagged. The captain said, "The bakkal's chancellor will wish to know your motives, and our dark vizars will be glad to torture out your truths."

The captain summoned neighbors to identify the other suspects and so dismissed a few terrified civilians caught in the sweep. Left cowering on their knees were four men and a mere girl in dark rags who couldn't account for themselves. Three were tattooed with the crocodile teeth bracelets of hatori.

"Condemned, all," the captain pronounced. "Roll up that wine barrel. Ges, Rhu, bring up a prisoner. M'saba, do the honors."

Pinned by the arms, the first hatori was draped across a wine barrel. M'saba's four feet, each as big as the barrel, drummed forward. The rhinaur hefted a halberd long as a flagpole with a steel axe head big as a tabletop, raised it toward the sky, and swept it earthward.

The massive axe lopped off the thief's head like a chicken's, shattered the oak barrel into splinters, and buried itself in the street three feet deep. M'saba loved her mistress Amenstar and hated her attackers. Her frustration showed.

Captain Anhur snickered. "Roll out another barrel. Not so hard this time, 'Saba."

In a trice, the thieves' bloody carcasses were stacked in the street with the heads plunked atop as a warning.