panic, the mere sight of something approaching from the sanctuary would probably
have flushed him anyway.
Samlor had survived too many attacks ever to be wholly unprepared for another.
He lunged forwards, shouting to further disconcert the bowman. The screen was
toppling as the bowman jerked back from the fingers of Samlor’s left hand
thrusting for his eyes. The bowstring slapped and the quarrel spalled chips from
the archway before ricocheting sideways through a swinging door-panel. Samlor,
sprawled across his attacker’s lower legs, slashed at the other’s face with the
knife he had finally cleared. The bowman cried out again and parried with the
stock of his own weapon. Samlor’s edge thudded into the wood like an axe in a
firelog. Three of the bowman’s fingers flew out into the room.
Unaware of his maiming, the bowman tried to club Samlor with his weapon. It
slipped away from him. He saw the blood-spouting stumps of his left hand, the
index finger itself half severed. Fright had made the bowman scream; mutilation
now choked his voice with a rush of vomit.
Samlor squirmed forwards, pinning his attacker’s torso with his own. He wrestled
the crossbow out of the unresisting right hand. There was a pouch of iron
quarrels at the bowman’s belt, but Samlor ignored them: they were on the left
side and no longer a threat. The gagging man wore the scarlet and gold livery of
Regli’s household.
The Cirdonian glanced quickly around the room, seeing nothing but a helical
staircase reaching towards more lighted panels a hundred feet above. He waggled