They scrambled for the nearest bush and took shelter behind its sparse foliage. The dust rising from the tramping of their feet gave them a light screen with which to hide. That and the lingering autumnal mist gave them time to think.

“Where’d the shot come from?” Ravelin wondered aloud, “I couldn’t see!”

Tirce pursed her lips and tried to remember. Gods, it was hard to keep a clear head when bullets were flying! All she could think about was how Ubodai had keeled over with a gaping hole in his face leaking all over the ground.

“Focus, woman,” Ravelin shook her back into the present, “You’re shaemish, aren’t you? Use those famous senses of yours!”

Tirce nodded and took several deep breaths. Her mind cleared as she found her focal point just above her stomach where it met the spread of her ribs. Calm descended, smooth as ice. She selected the farheeder and tipped its contents back into her gullet then slid the wand of yew out from her sleeve and pointed it roughly northwest where she guessed they were lurking. Tirce heard garbled voices and moved the wand closer, heard them say:

“—rushing your shot. No point in doing things in a hurry. Unless you’re reloading, that is. Finish that up before they find us.”

“Did you see the way his head came open?” a second voice said eagerly, “Like a ripe pumpkin it was! Bully shot!”

“Yes, yes, well done. Are you done?”

“I think so.”

“No you aren’t, Heather. Gods, how many times do I have to tell you? Prime your pan with powder! How’s it going to fire without powder in the pan?”

“You’re always yelling at me,” Heather said, sounding hurt.

“I’m sorry brother. But you really must learn to rob folks by yourself one day. Quickly now, so we can kill these fools and take what’s ours before the others get here.”

“My match went out. It’s this damned wind—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Heather!”

Tirce heard the faint rustle of coarse powder grains being poured down the length of the barrel. It sounded like pebbles in those rainmaker toys they’d played with as children. This was no toy, however, an instrument of deadly precision, especially for a powder weapon. A match hissed as it was relit, a ramrod clinking as it pressed down a lead ball and wadding.

“Strike the ground with the butt a few times, make sure it’s packed in tight,” Heather’s brother was saying. The wooden stock of the musket rang out against hard pebbles, and that was when Tirce had them.

That sound meant that they were on the road ahead, their position concealed by the drainage ditch in which they were kneeling, the pair of them only seconds away from loosing another volley. She described the spot to Ravelin, who nodded and headed off in a wide circle, a bolt clenched between his teeth as he cranked his crossbow string back. He gestured for her to take the other flank and she did so, running bent over with her hands hanging low to present a smaller target.

As she ran, Tirce cast a minor glamouring on herself to place more strength in her upper torso. She then went on all fours at a long, loping gait which further flattened her profile. The bandits stepped onto the center of the road and took aim. Tirce heard the bang of a musket and saw Ravelin drop. Through her still-heightened senses she heard the click of a trigger and the creak of the claw prodding the burning match into the pan. Throwing herself aside at the last instant, Tirce felt the bullet whipping tiny eddies into the mist. She then rose with a banshee yell, sickle-moon swords in either hand.

She was upon them! The bandits swore and reached for their swords at their hips. The taller one swung his musket like a club and attempted to stove her head in with its hefty stock, but she trapped the musket in place with one sickle while ripping its partner right across his belly. He screamed like a pig having its throat slit for blood pudding and staggered, holding his own spilling innards.

“Heather!” cried the remaining bandit, “No!”

He drew a short hanger sword and came at her with desperate fury, hacking and smashing without the least bit of technique. Tirce whirled to confront him but found that one of her blades was caught fast in the dying man’s ribcage. Leaving it there and cursing her luck, she met his attack with only one blade. But there she had a problem; her sickles were meant to be used as a pair. Alone they were of much less use, as she was now discovering.

The bandit’s hanger sword was longer than hers by a good few inches, which gave him the advantage of range. Tirce yielded ground as she had been trained to do, flinching back at each of his windmilling attacks while searching for an opening of her own, in constant, fluid motion. That is until a stone caught her ankle and cut her dagger-dancing short.

“Die, she-devil!” screamed the vengeful brother. He raised the hangar in both hands and opened let out a triumphant scream which ended abruptly when a bolt flew into his open mouth.

“Easy does it,” Ravelin said to Tirce as he walked up, hatchet in hand. The bandit gurgled something as he threw up his arms to surrender, but whatever it was he said, Ravelin wasn’t listening. He precluded further dialogue by chopping pieces off the man until he stopped moving.

“Can you move?” he asked Tirce, wiping the blood from his eyes with his sleeve. He came to her side and helped her stand. She did not refuse him—her leg was a line of fire from heel to knee.

“Yes,” she said, hopping along on one leg with her arm across Ravelin’s shoulders. He was surprisingly strong for his size, being a wiry bundle of sinews and not much else. The witchbrew was burning fast. She reached for the lingering remnants of it through the stinging cloud of pain and pointed her wand of yew up and down the length of the road.

“More of them are coming,” she said, hearing the rattle of corselets and powder horns.

“Where? How many?” Ravelin called after him.

“Less than a quarter of a mile behind us. I’m not sure how many,” Tirce said as the last of the witchbrew vanished. She tore her sickle free of the bandit’s torso, sawing it back and forth till it came loose with the wet sound of meat on the butcher’s slab.

“Help me!” cried the shaemish boy trapped under Ubodai’s body. She hopped over to the boy, a darkhaired and skinny lad of some seventeen years, and tried to shift the ogre’s weight off him. But try as she might, the mountain of flesh and steel would not budge.

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“We haven’t the time for this,” Ravelin said, “We should go find the others. These two were only lookouts—I’m guessing they were put here to pin us down while their friends picked us off from the rear. Tirce, for the last time—leave him.”

“Shut up and help me, you damned chancer!” she screamed at him, “He’s only a boy.”

“And very much useless to us,” Ravelin began, but Tirce silenced him with a cold look. Going back for one of the muskets, she stuck its muzzle beneath the ogre’s bulk and began to use it as a lever. Seeing that she would not be dissuaded, Ravelin went and got the other musket, pausing to rifle through the bandits’ pockets and relieve them of spare change, the still-burning matches, bags of lead shot, powder horns and a bandolier of charges, which were stoppered wooden containers filled with premeasured amounts of powder. He returned and together he and Tirce succeeded in heaving Ubodai aside.

“Thank you,” said the darkhaired shaemite, wriggling free, “I thought I was a goner.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” was Ravelin’s terse reply, “Now let’s get clear before—”

“—before what, exactly?” came a familiar voice from behind them. A leper in an iron mask emerged from behind a thicket, stepping out onto the road. Tirce recognized him as the same leper who had so enthralled Neisha with his wares. Behind him were eleven other bandits with muskets primed, axes and swords hanging from their belts. Tirce was surprised to note that they were all wearing uniforms of the Civil Militia, which consisted brown buff coats and green-striped pantaloons.

Yet by the time they shouldered their weapons and walked into range Tirce and Ravelin had already rolled into the drainage ditch, Ravelin loosing a bolt as he did. A bandit fell back with curse, a bolt sticking out from his forearm.

“Don’t just stand there! Shoot them, or something! I want at least one of them alive!” cried the leper. All at once a cacophony of fire came down on the pair, bullets whipping and whining overhead. The bandits fanned out and knelt among the bushes, keeping up a constant rate of fire.

“Load the muskets,” Ravelin begged Tirce, sitting down and planting his boot on the stirrup of his crossbow. She unslung the bandolier from around Ravelin’s neck and took one of the wooden charges, pulling the stopper with her teeth and pouring its contents down the muzzle. In went the ball, wadding, and finally the ramrod, once, twice, three times—just as Wunther had taught her in a basement beneath Tiltdown. Two shots every sixty seconds had been the standard, and for a few hot minutes she and Ravelin traded bullets and bolts across the road with the leper’s crew. Once, a bandit tried to cross the road and charge at them with a sword drawn, but Ravelin sat him back down with a well-placed shaft to the belly. The others learned from his mistake and were content to stay in the shrubbery. Soon the air was filled with thick clouds of gun smoke and neither side could even see the other. Tirce put down the musket and drew her sickles, preparing for the inevitable melee. She had no illusions of winning—two against a dozen were very long odds, even for a dagger-dancer. Beside her, Ravelin slid out his hatchet and knife, a grim look of resignation on his face. They were down to the last two charges on the bandolier, and Ravelin was fresh out of bolts.

“Are you quite finished?” the leper called out.

“Come and find out!” Tirce replied.

“Parley?”

“Not on your life!”

“Parley,” agreed Ravelin, ignoring her outraged looks. The leper stepped back out onto the road with his men following in a long, cautious line.

“I must say, I wasn’t expecting you to get Brawne and Heather,” he said, a wheellock pistol in one nonchalant hand, “Then again, they never were the brightest.”

“They jumped the gun,” Ravelin agreed, “Shot as soon as we came into view, the fools. Just as I should have done when I clapped eyes on you at the bazaar.”

The leper pulled off his mask and tossed it aside to reveal the deformed face of Nivens, who was looking very pleased with himself.

“If wishes were dishes, we’d none of us go hungry,” Nivens quoted.

“Is that what this is about? Aren’t satisfied with what Viago gives you? I’m acting on his orders, Nivens. He’ll never forgive you for getting in his way.”

“Viago? Bah! That old gnome is on his way out and everyone knows it. Except you, that is. There’s a new game in town, and to play it, you need a new set of friends,” Nivens gestured to his militiamen.

“Are you saying Stahlka is behind this?” Ravelin called back, sounding surprised.

“Why not? They have the muscle, Ravi, and a keen thirst for vestiges, too.”

“It’s a rare son of a bitch who takes contracts on other chancers. I take it that you’re the one who changed the sigils in the floodways. Trying to confuse me, were you?”

“Aye, I had hoped the wriggoths would do the trick. Damn near clawed my eyes out scrawling that heathen nonsense on the walls. But you’re a resilient chap. Always have been. Your luck had to run dry someday. It’s not that they want you gone personally,” Nivens continued in an almost apologetic tone, “You just happen to be in the way, is all.”

“Is this what you are now? Stahlka’s lapdog?”

Nivens gave Tirce a gloating look.

“Oh, no. This contract came from a very special someone. Tell your wench to lose the pigstickers. I’m done playing games with you.”

The shaemish boy threw his sword over and stood up, bleating:

“I surrender! I surrender!”

“Good,” replied Nivens, and shot him dead on the spot, “Him we didn’t need.”

“You godbloody bastard!” shouted Tirce, “I’ll rip you to pieces!”

Nivens sighed and drew another pistol.

“No. That part is over with, remember? Now comes the questions. After,” he grinned evilly, “After, you and I can have some fun together. Come out here and get on your knees.”

Tirce felt sick to her stomach. The militiamen chortled as if Nivens had said something terribly clever. They advanced, stepping around the ogre’s corpse, a line of loaded guns levelled at the ditch.

“I’d sooner die on my feet than in disgrace,” Tirce growled, her fists tightening around the sickles.

“Either way will work,” Nivens said simply, “Where’s the rest of your meat wagon, Ravi?”

“They legged it east like I told em to. If you hurry, you might still catch them,” Ravelin lied.

“Too thin, Ravi, too thin,” Nivens sneered, “If I have to ask again, you’ll catch a ball between your eyes for free. That, or we’ll give you a hammering you won’t believe.”

“I’ll show you a hammering!” said a deep voice that seemed to well up from out of the very earth. Nivens looked back in time to see a gauntleted fist close around the leg of one of his henchmen and wrench him off his feet. With a shout Ubodai rose from the dead, dripping pink blood from his open head wound and roaring: “For Au Shang and The One God!”

The ogre swung the unfortunate militiaman like he was threshing grain with a flail, dashing the man’s brains out all over the hard gravel. He whirled the limp body around in crazed circles, sending Nivens and the others scattering. The bandits fired everything they had at the enraged ogre, but Ubodai’s oversized armor was so thick that he shrugged it all off without complaint. Their panic certainly didn’t help much either, and when Ubodai took hold of the other leg and tore the man bodily in half, they broke and ran for their lives. Ubodai beat his chest at them and shouted after them:

“I am Ubodai, son of Xhanshon!”

Tirce went tearing after them eager for revenge, but fell after only a few steps, her twisted ankle giving out completely.

“Oh, don’t you fret, Tirce,” Ravelin said as he loaded his crossbow and sent a bolt after the retreating bandits, which missed, “You’ll have your chance. They’ll be back, and in greater numbers.”

“Let them!” Tirce said, her eyes burning with tears. To be threatened with violation, to see one of her own people put like a dog for no good reason, it filled her with incandescent rage, “They’ll pay for that boy’s life a thousand times over! They’ll pay, every last one of them!”

“Yes,” Ravelin assured her, “But at a time and place of our choosing. Ubodai, are you still with us?”

The ogre turned at the sound of his voice.

“Yes, son of the Wasting. I am here, though my eyes darken,” the ogre rumbled. Ubodai lurched towards them, clutching at his bleeding head and moving with uneven strides.

“Good. We’ll head out as soon as we find the others.”

“Where to?” Tirce said in a voice still choked by pain and outrage. She put herself beneath one of Ubodai’s arms to support him even as her ankle grated loudly, bone against bone.

“To Maw, of course,” Ravelin said, taking Ubodai’s other side and lending his strength, “Tis a fortress after all.”

“Then you mean to take them head-on?”

“I do.”

“Just when I thought you entirely lacking in spine.”

“I’m just chock-full of surprises that way, aren’t I?” Ravelin replied with a re