Jon Sprunk - Shadows son

"You should have stayed away." He centered his sword point on Calm's chest. "You should have let us take the girl. Now you're going to die."

Caim launched a feint and counterthrust, but Markus batted it aside with the shield.

"You're already dead," Caim said. "You're just not smart enough to realize it yet."

Markus growled as he charged. Caim twisted away from the sword, but the shield's boss caught him in the chest and drove him back into the wall. His left arm was trapped between the shield and the room's partition. The broadsword fell, and he caught it with a desperate parry. Markus's stale breath blew in Calm's face as they strained against each other, chest to chest. The air was filled with their grunting and huffing.

Around the periphery of the room, the shadows quivered with agitation. Caim heard them hissing in the back of his head, eager to attack.

Back! he shouted at them. This is my fight.

But he couldn't push free. Markus was bigger, stronger, and he had the leverage. Moment by moment, he crushed the breath from Calm's lungs. Inch by inch, the sword's edge dipped closer to his head.

"Not so dangerous now, are you?" Markus smiled over the edge of his shield. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. "Caim the Knife, the most feared man in Low Town, chopped up and gutted like a market hog."

Calm's chest burned. His right arm was shaking, and he'd lost feeling in his left. The sword fell a few more inches. He could see his reflection in the surface of the blade.

"I wonder," Markus said. "Will you scream like your lady-love did when I stuck her with my prick?"

Caim spat full in his face.

Markus drew back his sword as he blinked away the sputum. The motion made some space for Caim, enough to catch a breath of air.

Markus's eyes narrowed to bloodshot slits as he swung. Calm's knife flicked out. A heartbeat later, the sword clattered to the floor and Markus staggered backward, one hand pressed to the side of his neck. Ruby red arterial blood streamed down the front of his fine uniform. Disbelief and annoyance vied in his gaze as he slipped to the flagstones.

The blood roared in Calm's ears like a rushing flood. His hands shook from the exertion. He took a deep breath. The shadows had quieted at the edge of his vision. He could feel their impatience as he let out the breath. Flicking the blood from his blades, he resumed his hunt.

Caim jogged through a groined archway into another wing of the palace. As he passed a flight of stairs, distant sounds caught his ear: the slam of a door followed by a wailing roar. The storm.

Caim shook the excess gore from his knives as he turned onto the steps.

The shadows coursed before him.

ur chariot awaits, Princess," Ral crooned into Josey's ear.

She tried to bite him, but he kept his arm well away from her mouth. The sharp point of his sword pressed into her back.

A carriage awaited in the bailey courtyard below, surrounded by fluttering torches held aloft by rain-drenched soldiers. Ral shouted to catch their attention, but his words were lost in the storm. Josey almost laughed at his predicament. Besides the door there was no other way off the roof except for a fifty-foot drop to unforgiving stone.

"Your lover," he said, "is dead by now, darling. A pity I didn't get the chance to cut his throat myself. Shall we go see the corpse?"

Before he could take a step, however, a shape appeared in the doorway. Josey didn't have to see the face to know who it was. A gasp broke from her lips, and relief, so long withheld, suffused her body and drove away the bitter chill as Caim stepped out onto the roof. He moved with his customary grace, but Josey could see his side was paining him by the way he walked. His long knives glittered in his hands, their blades stained scarlet. And he wore something new. The hilt of a sword jutted over his right shoulder.

While Josey took in the sight of her savior, a hulking figure moved from behind the door. She opened her mouth to warn Caim, but Ral mashed his forearm hard against her lips. The Brother swung. Josey's muscles went rigid as she witnessed what happened next, for she had seen it before in the cellar beneath her father's house.

The night came alive.

One moment the mace was sailing toward Calm's head, and then he was gone, wrapped in impenetrable shadows. Red stains blossomed on the Brother's uniform, at his side, his arm, his chest. Slack-jawed, the soldier collapsed and did not move again.

Josey sighed as Caim emerged from the darkness.

"Bloody Phebus." Ral yanked Josey sideways. "Not another step! The princess and I are leaving. You'll stand aside if you don't want to see her insides splattered all over the yard."

Caim stopped a dozen paces away. "I don't think so, Ral. Without Josey you're just an upstart with dreams of grandeur."

"I've got important friends, people who want to see me on the throne. Princess or no princess, I will rule Othir."

"Then prove it." Caim took another step. "Kill her."

Josey shuddered as she looked into his eyes. He wasn't bluffing.

"Stay back!" Ral shouted.

But Caim took yet another step, closing the distance between them.

Ral shifted his grip, and Josey felt herself slipping. Her bare feet scrabbled on the slick tiles. Caim leapt for her. He had dropped his knives. Pick them up! she cried inside her head even as she reached for him.

They slid down the slope, both of them straining to reach the other, but all she could think about was Ral, lurking above them, ready to pounce at any moment. A scream lodged in Josey's throat as the roof ended and empty space yawned beneath her feet.

Their fingers missed by inches.

Then, she was falling. Josey closed her eyes, the cry forgotten, and resigned herself to a swift death.

Something seized her arm and jerked her plummet to a halt. She looked up through the pouring rain, thinking Caim had somehow managed to catch her, but what she saw instead brought the scream rushing up her throat. Black as coal, so dark she couldn't make out its outline at first, it perched on a stone rainspout like a gargoyle. It looked like an overgrown wolfhound or a great jungle cat, with deep black holes for eyes and huge fangs like sooty icicles. Though the thing looked monstrous, it held her arm gingerly in its massive jaws.

Josey shook with body-jarring sobs as she hung from the mouth of the beast. Choking on tears of joy and fear, she contemplated the stones of the courtyard below. With firm resignation, she reached up around the creature's neck with her other arm. Rough bristles scraped against her wet skin.

With a rumbling growl, the creature shook its head and let go. Josey's piercing wail sliced through the storm as she fell, but her scream was cut short when her heels landed on firm footing. Shivering, she clutched at the wall. Her fingers found purchase on an entablature of ornamental scrollwork below the building's cornice.

Josey looked up. The beast was gone, vanished like a phantom, but the silhouette of a head peered over the edge of the roof above. She cried for help, but the wind snatched the words from her mouth. Lightning split the sky, followed by an epic crash of thunder that shook the palace walls, and the head disappeared.

Eyes squeezed shut, Josey tightened her grip and prayed.

Thunder rattled the roof tiles as Caim attacked.

He had recovered one of his suetes-a small miracle-but his thoughts were on Josey, dangling below. He didn't know what she had managed to grab onto; he couldn't see five strides in front of him through the storm's gloom. Whatever it was, he didn't think her grip would hold for long. He had to finish this fast. He feinted and cut low.

Ral beat the strikes aside and countered with a jab of his slender blade, but Caim was already moving. He slashed for the head, but the bastard jumped out of range. Something else was bothering him as well. When Josey had fallen over the side of the roof, he panicked. She was going to die and it was his fault. He deserved to die with her, but when he reached the edge, time had slowed to a crawl. In that instant, the shadows had scattered and he'd felt the presence again-the same presence he had felt in the Vine and again in Josey's cellar. The sensation had jangled his nerves like a splash of ice water. He'd stopped himself as his feet started over the side, but the feeling was gone.