oil lamp. ‘They say you keep your knife sharp, suppliant – but did gods forge
it? Can it shear the mesh of Hast-ra-kodi?’
Samlor palmed the bodkin-pointed push dagger from his wrist sheath and lunged,
his left foot thrusting against the wall of the chamber. Armour or no armour,
the priest was not a man of war. Samlor’s left hand blocked the sword arm while
his right slammed the edgeless dagger into the figure’s chest. The bodkin
slipped through the rings like thread through a needle’s eye. The figure’s
mailed fist caught the Cirdonian and tore the skin over his cheek. Samlor had
already twisted his steel clear. He punched it home again through armour, ribs,
and the spongy lungs within.
The figure staggered back. The sword clanged to the stone flooring. ‘What-?’ it
began. Something slopped and gurgled within the indestructible helmet. The
dagger hilt was a dark tumour against the glowing mail. The figure groped vainly
at the knob hilt with both hands. ‘What are you?’ it asked in a whisper. ‘You’re
not a man, not…’ Muscles and sinews loosened as the brain controlling them
starved for lack of oxygen. One knee buckled and the figure sprawled headlong on
the stone. The green glow seeped out of it like blood from a rag, staining the
flooring and dripping through it in turn.
‘If you’d been a man in your time,’ Samlor said harshly, ‘I wouldn’t have had to
be here now.’
He rolled the figure over to retrieve his bodkin from the bone in which it had
lodged. Haemorrhages from mouth and nose had smeared the front of the helmet. To