I cannot say how long that moment lasted, as the novice and I stared at one another. It can’t have been longer than seconds, but it felt like time froze. The acolyte was young. A boy, I think, though it could be hard to tell with priests. His white robes weren’t yet darkened by red dye, and his head was encircled by a band of copper rather than gold. His pale face, made sheet-white by horror, stared at me in frozen shock.

I should have killed him. I tensed to do it, fingers tightening around the shallow bend in my weapon’s haft. A sudden dash, or even a throw of the axe, and the acolyte would be silenced. He wouldn’t be faster than me in those layered robes. I could stop him with a spellcant, just long enough to cut him down. The words formed on my lips. If I spoke, I knew I’d have to do the rest.

I hesitated. And, like a spell breaking, the acolyte ran.

I watched him run, telling myself all the while to stop him. Then, cursing myself for a fool, I ran the opposite way.

***

The bells began to toll before I made it even a block from the cathedral.

I crouched in an alley as armored soldiers poured through the street beyond, rain pattering off their armor. Vinhithe had come alive like a kicked beehive, armored guardsmen emerging from barracks and towers across the settlement to scour the streets for whoever had beheaded their bishop. The streets had been emptied of the townsfolk, leaving the cobblestone paths of every block clear for ranks of poleaxe bearing foot troops or mounted cavalry.

As the one who’d done the beheading, I was inclined not to satisfy them. The gates would be closed, and every wall and tower manned, which left me a rat scurrying in a maze riddled with packs of vengeful cats. High above, the bells of the cathedral struck mournful tones across the streets. The sky rumbled forth an echoing peel of thunder. I turned my eyes up to the clouds, sullen. “Didn’t you want this?” I muttered. The sky didn’t answer, and I hadn’t expected it to. When the patrol had moved down the street and vanished into another block, I dashed across to the opposite alley, boots splattering through puddles with every step. I poised my axe on my shoulder, held in a tense grip.

“There!” Someone called from a window. I expected an archer, and flinched. But it was just an old man peering out of a third floor window, pointing with a gnarled finger. “He’s there!”

Great. Even the citizenry were against me. I’d botched this badly.

I didn’t know if any guards were near enough to hear, and didn’t wait to find out. I reached the mouth of the alley and moved into the relative shadow between craftsmen shops and townhomes. Vinhithe was a big town, built along a major river winding through the fertile heartlands of the subcontinent. Its streets merged and twisted with little order, buildings packed tight together.

Some of the alleys were narrow enough that even a small man might struggle to move quickly through them. I am not a small man. I had to turn sideways deeper down the alley as it dipped into a lower side street, my weapon and cloak becoming obstacles as I moved cautiously on the slick ground. The rain cascaded down off the roofs above, running in a shallow stream down the alley as though it were a miniature canal.

I reached the end of the alley and stopped, listening through the rain. Water dripped off the edge of my cowl, the dull roar of the storm making it difficult to tell if the next street was empty. There could be soldiers waiting for me to emerge, hidden in a hundred places. The town was a maze, and as much a danger to me as an advantage. The guards would know these streets, know how to head off an intruder. No doubt they were already putting up barricades and checkpoints.

I should have killed the damn acolyte. Why hadn’t I?

Because the war is over, I reminded myself, and you want to keep it that way.

Well, my softness was going to end either in my death or the deaths of more than a few members of the Vinhithe garrison. I glanced up, recognizing the belfry tower of another church, not the main cathedral. I had an escape plan already. All I had to do was reach the river.

Something tore past my head, missing an ear by a finger’s width, and clattered across a nearby wall. I turned and saw figures at the mouth of the alley. The townsfolk had alerted the guard then, and they had crossbows. I ran.

If not for the rain and the wind, I doubt they would have missed me. More crossbow bolts whipped past, clattering off stonework and splitting rain. I emerged from the alley into a small square, a fountain in the center fashioned in the likeness of three elf-maids pouring water from ewers into a basin. One of their pointy-eared heads erupted as a bolt went through it. I snarled out a bitter curse.

Figures moved through the rain as I passed the fountain. There were guards waiting for me, as I’d feared. Or I was just unlucky. I counted six through the haze of rain, not counting the marksmen approaching from behind.

I didn’t wait for them to encircle me or bring up reinforcements. I went forward like a battering ram, and was on the first soldier within seconds of their entry into the square. He was a big man, his breastplate bearing the horned wolf emblem of the local earl. His gauntlet wrapped around the handle of a flanged mace. His eyes widened beneath the brim of his helm at my speed, but he didn’t hesitate to grip his bludgeon in both hands and bring it up for a swing. Too slow. Still resting on my shoulder, my axe levered back as I took it in both hands and then brought it down in a merciless chop.

The earl’s executioner had been good. I am better. Raindrops parted as the fine-honed edge of the axe’s bit came down, driving through the big soldier’s peaked helm. Bone split beneath layers of steel and leather. One of the man’s eyes rolled up into his skull, the other popped loose, and he fell without sound.

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I went over him. The second guard died in two cuts, losing a hand at the wrist before I took his jugular on the backswing. The third took more doing, managing to parry my first swing in a flash of sparks before I slammed the butt of the axe’s haft into his jaw. Their helms were open-faced, made for sentry duty and not war, and his face broke in a splatter of blood and teeth.

I turned as a fourth soldier jabbed at my neck with the tip of a halberd. He caught the edge of my neck, drawing blood, but I leapt aside before he could use the curved hook beneath the spear’s point to catch me. He tried to turn, to get his weapon between us, but I was faster. Chain mail split as easy as flesh beneath my weapon’s Hithlen-bronze edge. I took the halberdier’s left arm at the shoulder, dropping low to duck under the wild swing of his cumbersome weapon as he turned in a death spiral, blood spraying in an artist’s mark across the rain-slick square to form a near complete circle.

Eight seconds. I’d made my gap, and turned toward another alley to escape the patrol. But the crossbowmen had arrived now, four of them. They fanned out on the far side of the square to take their aims, killing darts loaded.

I dove. They fired. I’m not sure which happened first. Two bolts missed, sinking into stone and whitewashed wood of nearby buildings with sharp cracks of impact. One broke off the fountain statues, shattering a slender elfin arm, and the fourth found my shoulder. It punched deep, going through layers of cloth, chain, and leather, then meat.

I hit the stone rolling. The bolt in my shoulder snapped, leaving half of its length still jammed in. Left shoulder, close to the bicep. I came to my feet, using the fountain as cover, and tried to take my axe in two hands. As muscle and bone brushed against the embedded dart, agony erupted like a detonating cannonball.

This was bad.

I glared through a gap in the statues. The crossbowmen were already reloading. I could kill them now, get them off my back, but it would heighten the risk of being penned into this square if more of the garrison was converging. Not to mention I’d be just as likely to get shot down the moment I stepped out of cover.

I ran instead, making the decision instinctively. I wasn’t here to wage war on the garrison. I’d completed my task. Now I needed to escape. I’d planned for this, in a loose fashion — I had an escape. But I needed to reach the river.

One of the surviving guards from the group that had tried to head me off moved into my path. He was young, his face tight with fear beneath his helm. I lifted my axe and saw him flinch. He lifted his poleaxe and prepared to die. Brave lad.

I’d spilled enough blood already today. Instead of cutting the boy down, I gathered my aura and shaped it. To the naked eye, it would look as though a soft ray of golden sunlight pale as an autumn dusk illuminated my form for a single moment. I brought the power to my lips and cast it forth with a word.

“Stop.”

The guardsman froze, lips parting in a breath he didn’t draw in. I’d put very little power into the cant, so it would only last a few seconds. Otherwise the boy might suffocate or die from a stopped heart.

I dashed past the immobile soldier and continued on, the crossbowman hesitating as their comrade got in their line of fire.

The bolt in my shoulder screamed with every step, but I ignored it. I’d been trained to focus through pain. As the sky darkened with the setting of the sun and the worsening storm, I made my way to the river. Behind me, blood ran with rain in the street.

***

I avoided further encounters with the guard. My goal was not to leave a bloodbath in my wake — truly, my goal had been to be gone from the city before anyone had known I was there — and I made an effort not to kill more of the garrison as I navigated the winding alleys and streets until I reached the river. By then night was falling, and the already overcast sky left my flight in darkness broken only by the flare of lanterns and torches as the earl’s men continued their hunt. That, and the frequent flashes of lightning forking half-seen through roiling black clouds.

The storm was growing worse, and that did not bode well for my planned method of escape — especially since the city was still full of soldiers. The earl sent his knights out in force to reinforce the garrison, and more than once I found myself sinking into the shadows as armored riders tore across my path, arms shining with odlight to pierce the veil of rain and stormcast dusk, their war chimera made into nightmare shapes by the deepening gloom.

I’d hidden a raft beneath one of the river docks, having intended to let the current sweep me miles from the township before a proper manhunt could get underway. Half of that plan was already botched, but I wasn’t about to try fleeing into the wilderness on foot from chimera-mounted knights. I ghosted through alleyways, flinching at every distant shout and beat of claw or hoof that reached me through the storm. The wound in my shoulder burned with each step. I’d removed the bolt, and used a healing cant to slow the bleeding, but it’s not a talent of mine. The injury throbbed with pain, and I’d lost too much blood.

It was in this state I finally reached the docks.

There I found three figures waiting for me, starkly visible from arms and armor shining softly silver.

Knights.