I One of the soldiers carried a lantern on a pole. The glazing was pro- tected by wire mesh, and similar metal curtains depended stiffly from the brims of the squad’s dented helmets. They carried pole arms, halberds, and short pikes, and they shuffled forward with such noisy deliberation that it was obvious they hoped the problem would go away without any need for them to deal with it.
Samlor was wilting enough to do that. The problem was how. Star wasn’t in the street and wasn’t answering him. He’d find her if he ad to wash Sanctuary away in the blood of its denizens, but first he had to get clear of this mess into which Fate seemed to have dropped him tirough no fault of his own.
Why had that clumsy, suicidal stranger attacked him? Why had the silow even accosted him? But first, survival.
Samlor switched the dagger to his right, master hand, and dodged into an alley nearest him.
The passageway was scarcely the width of his shoulders, but a door- strapped and studded with metal-gave onto it from the building on the other side. The Cirdonian slapped the panel as he dodged past it. Had it opened, he would have dived in and dealt with those inside in whatever fashion seemed advisable.
But he didn’t expect that; and, as he expected, the door was as solid as the stone to either side of it,
The alley jogged, though Samlor didn’t recall an angle from inside the Vulgar Unicorn’s taproom. He slid past the facet of masonry, into an instant of pitch darkness before someone within the tavern reignited a lamp.