The Spearslayer Sect was annihilated at the Battle of the Golga River by the treachery of the Three-Nation Alliance. A thousand years of knowledge and the perfection of the warrior arts lost in a single afternoon. A handful survived to join the Spearslayer diaspora. Here is one Spearslayer’s story.
NEAR THE STOREROOM window Grumblebones hunched, squinting through a dirty pane of glass with eyes watery with age.
Who was the cook talking to at this early hour in the kitchen courtyard?
The sun was on the verge of rimming the horizon in the east. She knuckled her eyes.
As senior chief (and only) cataloguer and recorder for Merchant Tubbin, a dealer in imitation relics and fake artifacts, she needed sharp eyes to record distribution and sales results from across the vast Najar region.
Tubbin had taught her the business, and she enjoyed her job except for the occasional pang of regret for selling phony relics and artifacts promising wondrous benefits—wart removal, love-making prowess or the growing of new teeth. Other artifacts guaranteed the purchaser wealth, true love, and admiration.
Grumblebones kept the supply of fake relics sorted and labelled in overflowing wooden boxes on the shelves of the storeroom accessed from the kitchen in Tubbin’s house. Beyond the storeroom was the main house.
Working for Tubbin’s business made her feel like she was part of an important enterprise. She enjoyed corresponding with artisans and sellers from the desert tribes in the south to Toltan in the north; from mighty Chenai in the east across Najar to the Islands of Oscea, dotting the western horizon.
At the moment, Tubbin was making his annual visit through the Najar region to reward active sellers of his products and to admonish those not achieving a certain level of sales.
Inside the storeroom, shadows dominated the corners and the shelves, while outside, the city-state of Epolis had yet to shake itself awake. The merchant city would soon stir from its slumber for another busy day of buying, selling and loading goods into ships. The ships were like restless greyhounds, ready to sail from Epolis and ply the great Najar Sea seeking profit.
Grumblebones turned her attention back to the cook, Nelda, and the man she was speaking with in the predawn light. Grumblebones and Nelda, along with Arno the handyman, were Tubbin’s employees in his relic distribution business.
Nelda was standing on the top step of the kitchen stairs, talking using her small, plump hands as much as her voice. A multi-coloured kerchief, visible in the indifferent light, framed her round face. An apron circled her wide hips. From Nelda’s elevated position on the top step of three steps leading to the kitchen, she was eye-to-eye with the stranger.
A beggar? The ruling Council of Eight promised to do something about beggars in Epolis.
Grumblebones exhaled and was about to go out to the kitchen courtyard and help Nelda send the beggar off when a second look at the beggar in the growing light gave her pause. He was of medium height and dark-skinned, with wide, meaty shoulders, and lean hips. He wore a linen shirt and pants with sandals on his feet. He carried a wooden staff as tall as himself.
It was something in the way he carried himself. Was it a military bearing? Or her imagination?
She stepped away from the window as the pink sky ushered in the first rays of morning sunshine. Grumblebones was taller and thinner than the average swarthy Epolian and ran to bone and sinew. She leaned backwards to stretch. The crack of her back was audible in the quiet storeroom in Tubbin’s ornate sandstone and timber home decorated with carved grotesques on each corner to keep evil spirits away.
She opened her accounting book and double-checked today’s first shipment:
50 true love amulets from the skin of the holy goat of Asmar.
100 dried, crushed thistle packets with a ‘secret ingredient’ to cool ardent suitors.
20 red ape teeth necklaces.
10 ‘Gozoo Powder’ boxes.
Grumblebones knew there was no holy goat and the ‘secret ingredient’ to cool the ardent suitor was sand. They sold filed horses’ teeth as teeth from the ferocious red apes.
Juju priests gathered real Gozoo Powder from burial mounds in the outer reaches of the Maribi Lands. It could reanimate the dead, among other things. Tubbin’s fake Gozoo Powder sparked and produced a thick, pungent odour, but that was all.
A wooden box on the table contained a dozen religious relics advertised as from ‘Owen of the Dirty Feet’ and the ‘Petrified Eye of Rajam the Delayer’. The former guaranteed pregnancy. The latter prevented it.
Her nose twitched at the smell of wood-smoke and roasting meat. She stared out the dirty window again and the morning light turned golden as it continued to inch its way across the wide kitchen courtyard, illuminating a large kitchen garden and gardening shack. The courtyard was ample enough to hold half a dozen chariots and horses.
Grumblebones glanced at another table piled with a jumble of boxes, pots, and bottles acquired yesterday at the auction of a relic merchant who had passed away. Organizing this mess from the auction was today’s task. She needed to get the storeroom tidied up for when Master Tubbin returns from his business trip. She hoped today wouldn’t be as warm as yesterday.
The day promised to be as hot as a slow oven with a tangy taste of salt in the air.
‘Agreed. You turn over the kitchen garden and I’ll feed you breakfast,’ said Nelda the cook, to the man standing in the kitchen courtyard. His skin was the colour of burnished leather, and he had the angular face of a Thessite. A sprinkling of grey frosted his short black hair.
‘You’re in luck. Arno, our handyman, is off on another drunk and we have work to do around here,’ said Nelda, handing the man a gardening fork. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I am Dar.’
‘Well, Dar, you’d better get started if you want to eat today.’ Nelda gave a dry chuckle and smiled.
Nelda watched him walk over to the site of the kitchen garden. He moved like a wildcat, less walking and more like flowing over the ground. She stared a moment longer, thinking, If this Dar proved to be a good worker, we send Arno on his drunken way and replace him with this fellow?
Dar made quick work of the garden. Later, he chopped firewood for his dinner. Nelda had listened to the rhythmic and heavy chopping sound of an axe blade biting into wood for most of the afternoon. A few times she peeked through a window and watched the smooth roll of his muscles.
He never tired of raising the axe overhead before swinging it in a wide arc until it cracked into and split a log.
He worked twice as fast as Arno and took no breaks.
Nelda watched him eat his well-earned dinner out of the corner of her eye as she fussed around the kitchen.
‘Dar, you earned your breakfast and dinner today. Would you consider staying on as a handyman? I could talk to Master Tubbin for you.’
‘That’s kind but I must continue on my journey to Chenai.’
‘When do you plan to leave?’ A look of curiosity spread across her fleshy face.
‘Tonight.’
‘Tonight? Why at night? You’ll have to sleep along the road. That’s not safe. You can sleep in the garden shack in the courtyard and leave first thing in the morning. How does that sound? I’ll prepare a food package for the road. It’s no bother.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I like hard workers like you. Do the job and do it right.’
‘Tomorrow morning then. Your men are ready and will be in position?’ asked a dark-haired man wrapped in a black silk robe. His curly and tousled black hair dusted his shoulders and contrasted with his alabaster white skin. He reclined on a gold and green fabric divan set on a dais. His eyes were the colour of dirty ice as he peered unblinking from a lean and hungry face at a lanky Epolian soldier.
The soldier wore a steel breastplate and greaves. He stood with his shoulders back, staring straight ahead at the wall with red, ragged eyes. His skin stretched taut over his jaw and cheekbones.
‘Yes, my Lord Mage,’ said the soldier.
The Mage for the Epolis’ ruling body, called the Council of Eight, swung his feet to the ground and sat on the edge of the divan. The lantern sputtered. The Mage snapped his fingers, and the lantern’s flame sparked and doubled in size, chasing shadows back to the edges of the chamber. Sweet floral scents floated in through the chamber’s windows from the inner courtyard.
The Mage stood up, and standing on the dais, towered over the soldier. He looked down on the soldier with a face as cold as a carving.
‘Tomorrow, Captain, the Council of Eight will be no more and I’ll be the first king Epolis has had in five hundred years. No longer will I have to use my magic to support the idiotic pronouncements and projects put forth by the Council.’
He stared at the soldier with a cold, expressionless face. ‘Captain, you will lead my armies as General. A luxurious life will be yours.’
The Mage stepped off the dais and paced across the ornate bedroom chamber with his hands behind his back. The Captain remained at attention. The Mage paced for a minute, leaving and entering the yellow circle of light cast off from the lantern.
He stopped pacing and said, ‘One good thrust will overthrow the Council. That’s all it will take.’
‘The Council Guards are loyal to me,’ said the Captain. ‘We can take over the city by force, My Lord Mage.’
‘Maybe. But the Ur-Kars guarantee our success. Ur-Kars are like having an army in your pocket.’
‘Ur-Kars?’ said the Captain.
The Mage picked a grape off the side table of fruit next to the dais and held it up between finger and thumb.
‘The wizards of the ancient ones conjured these half bear-half man creatures. Then encased each Ur-Kar in a pellet the size of a grape for ease of transportation. Scatter the pellets on the ground, add water, and seven-foot Ur-Kars spring fully formed from each pellet. I will scatter the Ur-Kar pellets in the Council Chamber and sprinkle water. A savage army of bear-men will rise, ready to follow my orders.’
‘My soldiers will secure the government buildings, the harbour, and city gates.’
‘Tubbin doesn’t realise, nor did I until recently, what he has in his jumble of boxes purchased at the auction,’ said the Mage. ‘I couldn’t bid as people would want to know what the Council’s appointed Mage was doing bidding at a fake relic vendor auction.’ He pulled a thin, mirthless smile.
A whooshing sound made the two men turn toward the chamber’s window. They watched a pair of dark wings flap and whisk away the intense, sweet perfume of the night-blooming jasmine flower that drifted through the window.
The Mage smiled. ‘Gardo, is everything set?’
A brown-furred flying monkey standing hip-high to a man hopped down from the windowsill and landed on all fours. It flashed a sullen look at the Captain before waddling over on bowed legs to the Mage and conversing in a strange guttural form of speech. Then, the monkey hopped back onto the windowsill, stretched its wings, and launched itself with powerful legs into the dark sky.
‘Gardo sensed a Spearslayer in Tubbin’s house,’ said the Mage. A shadow of concern passed over his face. ‘Gardo will take care of the Spearslayer.’ He ran a hand through his long, dark hair.
‘Spearslayers? They don’t exist,’ said the Captain.
‘A handful remain. The Three-Nation Alliance pays a hefty bounty for a Spearslayer head. Pick three men you can trust and meet me at the East Gate. We are going to take the Ur-Kar relics and a Spearslayer head tonight.’
The sun had long since set over the Najar Sea, casting a red glow on the white buildings with red-tiled roofs of the seaside city-state of Epolis. Dar stretched full length on a pallet inside the gardening shack, on his back with fingers interlocked behind his head. An odd assortment of broken equipment, empty wooden crates, and gardening gear filled the shack. He also found a stash of empty Usmarian brandy bottles hidden behind a threadbare rug in a corner.
Arno must have used this shack for a swallow during the day or through the long night.
The smell of the sea was in his nostrils, and the night had cooled off, helped by a gentle but steady breeze that carried away the rank smells of civilisation, lived raw and close to the bone. There was no window in the shack, and the moon had yet to rise. The meagre light was too weak to slip through the cracks in the warped and dried boards of the shack.
Dar lay enveloped in a thick, heavy blackness. He listened to the night sounds of insects and the light wind caressing and poking at the shack. Nelda had stuffed his belly with a hearty dinner and prepared a packet of food for the road. He’d sleep a few hours and wait for the moon to rise. Then continue his journey under cover of darkness.
His mind strayed to his son and daughter and the remaining steps of his journey. Tomorrow, he’d cross the Najar Sea, followed by a long trek through Xocar and into the wilderness and over mountains before he reached Chenai. He stretched and flexed his shoulders and arms before tensing and releasing his hawser-like thews to relax his body as a prelude to sleep.
His thoughts flew back over a decade to the battle at the River Golga, when the Three-Nation Alliance’s treachery destroyed the Spearslayer Sect, and a senior Oscean officer captured and protected Dar as a member of his household.
Now, I beg. Grateful for a garden shack to sleep in.
He rolled over onto his side and drifted into a troubled sleep.
Two hours later, his eyes snapped open. Drowsy and on the tattered edge of sleep, a sound different from the other night sounds wiggled into his ear. Outside, the moon was high in the night sky; the clouds had cleared, and wavering, unsettled moonlight slipped through the shack’s cracks.
The sound was the noise made by leather scraping on stone.
Nelda? Grumblebones? Awake?
He rolled onto his other side, pulled the rug over his shoulder and strained his ears to listen. Indistinct voices floated on the gentle breeze. He kicked the blanket off and rose from the sleeping pallet in one motion. He put on his sandals, grabbed his oak staff and patted his belt dagger.
Two decades as a Spearslayer had trained Dar to move like a phantom. He slipped out of the shack, and as he crossed the kitchen courtyard, he glimpsed a silent shape flying at him out of the darkness five feet off the ground. Dar threw himself to the left, and claws raked his back, feeling like acid. Dar’s muscle memory took over, and he snapped into the Spearslayer attack-ready position with his left foot forward and right foot behind as the anchor, his staff at chest height.
Gardo, the flying monkey, bared its fangs and veered away from the staff before circling and swooping down on Dar from twelve feet in the air. Dar delivered a series of short, staccato thrusts with his staff, blocking Gardo’s attacks.
Then Gardo darted, sunk the claws of one paw into the staff and yanked it out of Dar’s hands. Dar leaped forward and grabbed two handfuls of the snarling animal’s feathery wings and twirled the beast, ramming it to the ground face-first.
Gardo turned onto its back and snapped its fangs inches from Dar’s neck. Dar smelled its hot, fetid breath and struggled against the ferocity in its muscular body. Its eyes flashed blood red and glinted with insanity. Dar pushed Gardo’s spitting, growling maw aside and palmed his dagger. He smashed the flying monkey in the face with his fist, avoided a slashing paw and plunged his dagger into its neck. Blood and gore slopped onto Dar’s tunic, hands, and face.
The battle seemed to last hours, but it was a handful of seconds. He was breathing hard as his sweat mixed with Gardo’s blood and his clawed back burned.
A voice of command from the street outside the courtyard prompted Dar to roll right and flatten himself in the ground shadows.
I should leave. Whatever this is, it is none of my business. A flying monkey? This all smacks of magic—something I want no part of.
As he rubbed the palms of his hands on the grass to wipe the blood off, Dar heard a crash coming from the house.
‘By order of the Council Guard, open the door!’
Three soldiers with spears and the Captain of the Council Guard smashed Tubbin’s front door off its hinges and charged into the house.
Grumblebones and Nelda huddled halfway down the stairs to the second floor in their sleeping robes.
‘You, cover the front door. You, watch the back door.’ The Captain jerked his thumb at the soldiers. He jutted his jaw out. ‘Get the Ur-Kars. Find the Spearslayer.’ He pulled out a short stabbing sword and pointed it at Grumblebones and Nelda. ‘Where is the Spearslayer?’
Just then, a voice from the storeroom said, ‘What in the name of Kol and his seven bastard sons is going on here?’
Arno, rubbing his eyes, stood in the storage room doorway with his jaw hanging open as he stared at the soldiers with spears crashing through the front door.
‘Kill the Spearslayer,’ ordered the Captain. A soldier with a bushy red beard rushed forward and rammed a spear point into Arno’s chest with a grunt. He pulled the spearpoint free with a wet sucking sound and rammed it forward two more times. Arno’s blood ran down his front and onto his rough workman’s pants. He wavered for a second and then his knees buckled, releasing him to the floor.
The Captain shoved Grumblebones and Nelda into the kitchen and ushered them into a corner near the stove. The soldier dragged Arno’s body into the kitchen.
‘Is there anyone else here? You lie and you’re dead,’ said the Captain.
Grumblebones babbled, staring at Arno dead on the floor.
‘No,’ said Nelda through hands clasped over her mouth.
The Captain grabbed a handful of Arno’s hair and pulled the head back, exposing his throat. He hacked off Arno’s head with a several whacks of his short sword.
‘This Spearslayer head is worth a bucket of gold!’ said the Captain. He turned and wiped his blood-stained sword on an apron hanging on the wall.
The coppery stench of blood overwhelmed and clogged nostrils.
Soon, the Mage entered through the demolished front door and sauntered through the storeroom and into the kitchen.
‘I sense the Ur-Kars in this house.’ He shut his eyes and then fluttered them open before walking back into the storeroom.
‘What a mess,’ shouted the Mage from the storeroom. ‘How do you get anything done here? Captain, bring them in here.’
Grumblebones, Nelda, the red-bearded soldier, and the Captain shuffled into the crowded storeroom. The soldier carried a lantern. The Mage stood contemplating a table overloaded with boxes and wooden crates, bottles, and jars, many still not open.
‘There,’ said the Mage, pointing to two shallow wooden crates near the bottom of the pile.
The soldier put the lantern down and heaved the other boxes off the top of the pile onto the floor. The Mage snapped his fingers and produced a small flame in his hand, which he used to inspect the contents of the now exposed crates.
Each crate contained twenty-four clay pellets. Each lay in its own niche inside the crates.
‘Epolis is mine,’ said the Mage.
A grim smile passed over the Captain’s face before it returned to its stony countenance. ‘We got the Spearslayer too,’ said the Captain.
The Mage pulled down on the cuffs of his black silk gown and looked down his thin nose at the cowering women. Turning to the Captain, he said. ‘Let me see the Spearslayer.’
The red-bearded soldier went into the kitchen and kicked Arno’s head across the floor and into the storeroom.
The Mage grabbed a handful of hair and lifted the head to eye level. He closed his eyes and moved his lips, chanting a spell.
He tossed the head back into the kitchen.
‘Fool! This is not the Spearslayer. He has all the wrong sensations. Why hasn’t Gardo arrived yet?’
Dar watched a soldier peer into the darkened kitchen courtyard for a moment before stepping over the kitchen threshold. The soldier sidestepped away from the rectangle of lantern light, into the shadows by the side of the door.
The murmur of voices from inside came to Dar’s ears, but he couldn’t make out what was being said.
If I leave now, I can get out of Epolis with my head still attached to my shoulders.
But years of Spearslayer training wouldn’t allow him to leave. He was trained to act and assist, not to withdraw.
He cursed his training.
Was he still obligated to honour the dictates of his training? The Battle at the River Golga changed everything. Did anything matter anymore?
Of course it did. It always would.
His was the way of the Spearslayer.
Dar observed the soldier standing back away from the kitchen door with his spear leaning against the house. The soldier was rubbing his hands together to get warm. He was half-turned away from Dar.
Dar slipped like smoke around the edge of the garden with his staff in hand, heading for the kitchen.
Sweat soaked Dar’s shirt, and it stuck to his stinging, bloody back. He took a breath and let half of it out. Then he leaped forward in a rush and wrestled the staff across the soldier’s neck from behind. Dar pulled with sinewy muscles hardened by years of fighting and hard living, crushing his windpipe.
The soldier thrashed and pulled out his dirk. Dar pushed him to the ground, immobilizing the knife under his body. He drove his knee into his back and gave the soldier’s head a sharp yank, snapping his neck. He left the soldier’s body where it fell.
Dar wiped the sweat from the back of his neck and exchanged his staff for the soldier’s spear and moved like a panther, as if part of the night, to the kitchen door. Dar glanced at the headless body splayed on the floor inside, soaked in blood, and then stood flat against the wall in the shadows to one side of the kitchen door listening.
A voice from the storeroom reached Dar’s ears, saying, ‘We have the Ur-Kars. Burn this place down. Leave no evidence. Then we’ll deal with the Spearslayer and find Gardo.’
Dar watched a man in black silk stride into the kitchen from the storeroom, followed by a tall soldier with a Captain’s insignia on his breastplate. Both men carried shallow wooden boxes. A red-bearded soldier in the green and blue tunic of the Council Guards chivvied Grumblebones and Nelda into a corner in the kitchen.
The silk-robed man placed his box on the kitchen table and snapped his fingers to conjure a glowing, fiery orb. He then balled his fists, and as if he were throwing a rock, hurled two balls of flames through the open storeroom door. Soon, the smell of smouldering wood and the sound of crackling fire floated out of the storeroom.
Nelda fell to her knees in front of the Mage. ‘Please in the name of Kol and Mamo, My Lord Mage, I beg you to spare us.’
The Captain slid his dagger halfway out of its scabbard and looked at the Mage, a peasant dullness clouding his eyes.
Dar watched an instant longer, then coiled his muscles and exploded through the kitchen doorway. He feinted a spear jab at the red-bearded soldier’s face and then sliced downward, ripping a gash in his thigh that crumpled the soldier to the ground. The soldier’s spear clattered on the floor. The soldier grabbed at the table to steady himself and knocked a wooden crate of Ur-Kar pellets to the floor.
Dar watched the Captain slide a short sword out of its scabbard and the Mage next to him reach into a small box.
Everything moved as if underwater. Nelda scampered back to Grumblebones, standing in the kitchen corner near the stove. They stared at the men open-mouthed, like the audience at a play. Their eyes bulged in terror.
The Mage circled his arms and chanted, sending Nelda’s metal pots and pans flying from where they were hanging over the stove to rain down on Dar. Knocked off balance for a moment, Dar’s spear flashed forward again with incredible speed and slammed into the Mage’s small box, sending it sailing out of his hands and spilling a black sand-like substance on the floor.
‘No! The Gozoo Powder!’ said the Mage, stooping to brush up the powder.
Dar swerved his body sideways, avoiding a vicious downward hack from the Captain’s short sword. He grabbed shelving with one hand and toppled it, sending Tubbin’s Usmarian brandy collection crashing to the stone floor, spraying brandy and glass shards.
‘Don’t get the Ur-Kars wet!’ screamed the Mage.
Dar ducked under the Captain’s whistling sword and deflected the sword’s backswing with the spearpoint.
‘Get the boxes out of here,’ yelled the Mage.
The soldier guarding the front door and a limping red-bearded soldier with a bloody leg each grabbed a shallow wooden crate.
The Captain, lips pulled back, exposing chipped yellow teeth, plunged his sword forward at Dar again. Dar dodged left and knocked the sword aside with a flick of the wrists and sliced the officer’s forearm.
The Captain leaped back with a curse, slamming into the two soldiers in the crowded kitchen carrying the wooden crates. More clay grape-sized pellets bounced out of the crates and onto the stone floor. Three pellets skidded across the floor and rolled through a puddle of brandy.
‘No!’ screamed the Mage, clawing at his empty Gozoo Powder box for any of the magic powder that hadn’t spilled.
‘You’ve awakened the Ur-Kars! We haven’t prepared!’
A wavy luminescence emanated from the three wet clay pellets scattered on the floor. The luminescence transformed into fist-sized bluish-white floating will-o’-the-wisps. The glowing orbs bounced languidly across the kitchen floor.
A flash lit the kitchen, and faster than an eye blink, springing from the orbs were three towering seven-foot-tall humanoids with bear-like musculature, standing upright like a man but with the hulking shoulders of a grizzly bear. Coarse, matted fur covered their limbs, except in patches where human skin peeked through. Their semi-bestial faces had flat noses and powerful jaws.
The Ur-Kars looked out at the assembled group with eyes glowing with ancient memory and bared their teeth with snarling, throaty growls. A musky smell filled the kitchen.
The red-bearded soldier dropped his spear and the box he was carrying and limped out the kitchen door into the courtyard. An Ur-Kar switched back into its will-o’-the-wisp shape, materialised next to the red-bearded soldier and mauled him to death with its claws. His screams echoed in the courtyard as Nelda and Grumblebones huddled next to the stove with Arno’s unblinking eyes staring at them.
Dar smelled a musky scent behind him, turned and drove his spear into the chest of an Ur-Kar that had appeared behind him. The point of the spear cracked into bone and sliced sinew. Dar gave the spear a viscous twist. The creature roared and swiped at Dar before turning into a handful of dust.
The third Ur-Kar ripped the Captain’s throat out with a single swipe of its dinner-plate-sized paw, showering blood across the floor and spattering the walls.
Crackling flames from the storeroom licked the doorway, and heavy smoke flowed into the kitchen. The Mage threw the last of the Gozoo Powder he could scrape together off the floor into the air and chanted. The two beasts hesitated and gave low growls from deep in their thick chests. They looked at the Mage with penetrating dark eyes.
‘Kill the Spearslayer!’ ordered the Mage, pointing. The Ur-Kars transformed into a bluish-white light for an instant before one materialised behind Dar. Dar ducked a swipe from the claws and rolled across the glass fragments littering the flagstone floor as the Ur-Kars’ roar reverberated in his ears. Rolling to his feet, he heard the Mage shout ‘Attack!’ as he backed out of the room toward the courtyard, holding one of the half-empty wooden crates against his chest.
Dar took a big, quick step forward, ducked under the arms of an Ur-Kar and impaled the retreating Mage, pinning him to the wall. The wooden crate slipped to the floor. The Mage’s arms and legs flailed like a bug for a moment. Then, his head lolled on his neck. Flames fuelled by the spilled brandy licked the sides of the crate. Grumblebones and Nelda found their feet and streaked out the door, followed by a soldier.
The two Ur-Kars, no longer under the control of the Mage, hesitated in their attack and rampage in the burning house. One Ur-Kar transformed into its will-o’-the-wisp shape and darted in and out the kitchen door. Before the other Ur-Kar could transform and follow, Dar pulled out his dagger and leaped onto its back and plunged his dagger repeatedly into the beast’s neck. The muscular beast roared and spun around, trying to claw and buck Dar off its back. The seven-foot-tall Ur-Kar dropped to its knees with blood rolling down its chest before it dissolved into a handful of small bits of clay.
Dar put his foot against the Mage’s chest and yanked his spear out. The Mage’s body slumped to the floor.
Dar stepped into the courtyard, smelled a musky odour and rolled away from a swipe by a huge paw. Dar’s lungs were heaving, and the wound on his back throbbed. He stumbled back and assumed the Spearslayer attack-ready position. The Ur-Kar went down on all fours and sprinted like a bear toward Dar, its eyes flashing anger, spittle flying from its maw.
Dar bent his knees and pivoted on his rear foot, making a low sweep with his spear parallel to the ground, stopping the Ur-Kar’s rush. The Ur-Kar veered away and growled. Behind him, howling flames engulfed Tubbin’s home. The Ur-Kar transformed into a will-o’-the-wisp. The luminescent ball hovered for an instant before lifting itself over the courtyard wall and out of sight.
Waves of heat rolled off the inferno and the flames lit up the black sky. Dar moved away from the lurid, dancing flames, alert for any more Ur-Kars, and spied a body lurching out of the flames in the kitchen.
With choppy, erratic steps, Arno’s headless body emerged in the burning kitchen doorway. Its clothes were aflame, and it moved with a spasmodic shudder.
The box I knocked out of the Mage’s hand must have been necromancers’ Gozoo Powder for reanimating the dead. The spilled powder must have hit Arno.
Dar gauged the distance, took three quick steps and, using powerful shoulder muscles, hurled the spear. It ripped into Arno’s chest, knocking his headless body back into the fire. The body writhed as flames devoured it, leaving a charred ruin unrecognizable as a man.
Howls, shrieks, and bizarre faces shot forth from the flames streaking across the brightening sky as bits of the Gozoo Powder ignited and burned out.
‘Nightwatch! Fire!’ shouted neighbours in the street outside the courtyard as lantern light spilled from the windows of nearby houses.
‘Dar!’
It was Grumblebones with eyes wide, long grey hair askew, and her face soot-stained.
‘Go to the harbour. Take a ship. Go. Goodbye, Spearslayer.’
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