"Your Highness, I don't think this is such a good idea," Lieutenant Falkhan said. "In fact, I think it's a very bad idea."
Crown Prince Cayleb looked at his chief bodyguard and raised one eyebrow. It was an expression of his father's which he'd been practicing for some time now. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to have quite the same effect when Cayleb employed it.
"It's all very well for you to give me that look," Falkhan told him. "You aren't the one who's going to have to explain to the King what happened to his heir if something unfortunate does happen. And with my luck, the instant I let you out of my sight, something will."
"Ahrnahld, it's only a hunting trip," Cayleb said patiently as he handed his tunic to Gahlvyn Daikyn, his valet. "If I take a great thundering herd of bodyguards along, how am I going to hunt anything?"
"And if it should turn out someone is inclined to be hunting you? Things are just a bit unsettled lately, you know. And the last time I looked, there were several people on Safehold who didn't cherish feelings of great warmth where your house is concerned."
Ahrnahld Falkhan, the youngest son of the Earl of Sharpset, was only nine years older than Cayleb himself. He was also an officer in the Royal Charisian Marines, however, and by tradition, the Marines, and not the Royal Guard, were responsible for the heir to the throne's security. Which meant young Falkhan hadn't exactly been picked for his duties at random. It also meant he didn't let his youth keep him from taking his responsibilities to keep the heir to the Charisian throne alive very seriously indeed, and Cayleb hated it when he resorted to unfair tricks like logic.
"They'd have to know where I was, to begin with," Cayleb said. "And I haven't said I'm not willing to take any bodyguards along. I just don't see any reason to drag the entire detachment up into the hills less than twenty miles from Tellesberg."
"I see. And just how large a part of the detachment were you thinking in terms of?"
"Well . . ."
"That's what I thought." Lieutenant Falkhan folded his arms and leaned his broad shoulders against the wall of his prince's airy, blue-painted sitting room, and Cayleb was almost certain he'd heard a snort of agreement from Daikyn as the valet left the room.
"The least I'll settle for is a minimum of five men," Falkhan announced.
"Five?" Cayleb stared at him. "We won't need to stand off a regiment, Ahrnahld! Unless you think Nahrmahn or Hektor can get an entire army past the Navy."
"Five," Falkhan repeated firmly. "Plus me. Any fewer than that, and you aren't going at all."
"Unless I'm mistaken, I'm the prince in this room," Cayleb said just a bit plaintively.
"And I'm afraid princes actually have less freedom than a lot of other people." Falkhan smiled with true sympathy. "But as I say, I'm not going to face your father and admit I let anything happen to you."
Cayleb looked rebellious, but there was no give in Falkhan's eyes. The lieutenant simply looked back, patiently, waiting until his youthful, sometimes fractious charge's basic good sense and responsibility had time to float to the surface.
"All right," Cayleb sighed at last. "But only five," he added gamely.
"Of course, Your Highness," Lieutenant Falkhan murmured, bowing in graceful submission.
"Excuse me, Your Highness," Lieutenant Falkhan said the following day, as the crown prince, Falkhan, and five Marine bodyguards rode across a rolling valley through a winter morning which was working its way steadily towards noon.
This close to the equator, the weather was still quite warm, despite the official season, and the lieutenant was sweating in his cuirass's airless embrace. That wasn't the reason for his sour expression, however. That stemmed from the fact that the small town of Rothar, a prosperous farming village eighteen miles from Tellesberg, lay two hundred yards behind them . . . along with the local mayor, who'd just finished answering Prince Cayleb's questions.
"Yes, Ahrnahld?"
"It's just occurred to me that there seems to have been a small failure in communication here. Unless, of course, you ever mentioned to me exactly what you were going hunting for and I've simply forgotten."
"What?" Cayleb turned in his saddle and looked at the Marine officer with wide, guileless eyes. "Did I forget to tell you?"
"I rather doubt that," Falkhan said grimly, and Cayleb's lips twitched as he valiantly suppressed a smile.
The crown prince, Falkhan decided, had inherited every bit of his father's talent for misdirection. He'd gotten Falkhan so tied up in arguing about numbers of bodyguards that the lieutenant had completely forgotten to ask about the hunt's intended quarry.
"Certainly you don't think I deliberately failed to tell you?" Cayleb asked, his expression artfully hurt, and Falkhan snorted.
"That's exactly what I think, Your Highness. And I'm half inclined to turn this entire expedition around."
"I don't think we'll do that," Cayleb said, and Falkhan's mental ears twitched at the subtle but clear shift in tone. He looked at the prince, and Cayleb looked back levelly. "This slash lizard's already killed two farmers, Ahrnahld. It's got the taste for man flesh now, and more and more people are going to be out working the fields over the next few five-days. It's only a matter of time before it takes another one . . . or a child. I'm not going to let that happen."
"Your Highness, I can't argue with that desire," Falkhan said, his own tone and expression equally sober. "But letting you personally hunt something like this on foot comes under the heading of unacceptable risks."
Cayleb looked away for a moment, letting his eyes sweep over the foothills leading up to Charis' craggy spine. The dark green needles of the tall, slender pines moved restlessly, rippling like resinous waves under the caress of a strong breeze out of the south, and the white-topped, dark-bottomed anvils of thunderclouds were piling up gradually on the southern horizon.
Looking back to the west, towards Tellesberg, the green and brown patchwork of prosperous farms stretched across the lower slopes; above them to the east, the mountains towered ever higher. It was already noticeably cooler than it had been in the capital, and that would become steadily more pronounced as they climbed higher into the hills. Indeed, there was snow on some of the taller peaks above them year-round, and high overhead he saw the circling shape of a wyvern, riding the thermals patiently as it waited for some unwary rabbit or hedge lizard to offer itself as breakfast.
It was a beautiful day, and he inhaled a deep, fresh draught of air. The air of Charis, the land to whose service he'd been born. He let that awareness fill his thoughts as the air had filled his lungs, then looked back at the lieutenant.
"Do you remember how my father nearly lost his leg?"
"He was almost as young and foolish as you are at the time, I understand," Falkhan replied, rather than answering the question directly.
"Maybe he was," Cayleb conceded. "But however that may be, it didn't happen because he was running away from his responsibilities to his subjects. And there are at least a dozen children in Tellesberg today who have fathers because my father remembered those responsibilities." The crown prince shrugged. "I'll admit I didn't tell you about the slash lizard because I want to go after it myself. That doesn't change the fact that hunting it down—or, at least, seeing to it that it is hunted down—is my responsibility. And in this case, I think Father would support me."
"After he got done administering the thrashing of your life," Falkhan growled.
"Probably." Cayleb chuckled. "I'm getting a bit old for that sort of thing, but if you were to tell him about the way I threw dust into your eyes, he'd probably be just a little upset with me. Still, I think he'd agree that now that I'm here, I shouldn't be turning around with my tail between my legs."
"He wouldn't be any too pleased with me for letting you throw dust into my eyes, either," Falkhan observed glumly. Then he sighed.
"Very well, Your Highness. We're here, you fooled me, and I'm not going to drag you home kicking and screaming. But from this point on, you're under my orders. I'm not going to lose you to a slash lizard, of all damned things, so if I tell you to get the hell out of the way, you get the hell out of the way." He shook his head as the prince started to open his mouth. "I'm not going to tell you you can't hunt the thing, or how to go about doing it. But you're not taking any foolish chances—like walking into any thickets after a wounded lizard, for example. Clear?"
"Clear," Cayleb agreed, after a moment.
"Good." Falkhan shook his head. "And, just for the record, Your Highness, from now on I want to know what you're hunting, not just where and when."
"Oh, of course!" Cayleb promised piously.
However Cayleb might have misled him in order to get here in the first place, Falkhan had to admit that the crown prince was in his element as they moved cautiously across the mountain slope. Cayleb's tutors had their hands full getting him to pay attention to his books even now. When he'd been younger, that task had been all but impossible, but the royal huntsmen and arms masters couldn't have asked for a more attentive student. And however much Falkhan would have preferred to see someone else—anyone else, actually—hunting this particular slash lizard, the prince was showing at least a modicum of good sense.
Slash lizards were one of Safehold's more fearsome land-going predators. A fully mature mountain slash lizard could run to as much as fourteen feet in length, of which no more than four feet would be tail. Their long snouts were amply provided with sharp, triangular teeth—two complete rows of them, top and bottom—which could punch through even the most tightly woven mail, and their long-toed feet boasted talons as much as five inches long. They were fast, nasty-tempered, territorial, and fearless. Fortunately, the "fearless" part was at least partly the result of the fact that they were pretty close to brainless, as well. A slash lizard would take on anything that moved, short of one of the great dragons, but no slash lizard had ever heard of anything remotely like caution.
Cayleb knew all of that at least as well as Falkhan did, and he was making little effort to stalk his quarry. After all, why go to the trouble of looking for the slash lizard when he could count on it to come looking for him? Falkhan didn't much care for the logic inherent in that approach, but he understood it. And, to be honest, he also accepted that Prince Cayleb was much handier with the lizard spears they all carried than any of his bodyguards were. The lieutenant didn't much care for that, either, but he knew it was true.
The crown prince was actually whistling—loudly, tunelessly, and off-key—as they wandered as obviously as possible through the heart of the slash lizard's apparent range. They were on foot, and Falkhan supposed he should at least be grateful Cayleb wasn't singing. King Haarahld had an excellent singing voice—a deep, resonant bass, well suited to the traditional Charisian sea chanties—but Cayleb couldn't have carried a tune in a purse seine. Which did not, unfortunately, prevent him from trying to on all too many occasions.
None of the bodyguards was trying to be particularly quiet, either. All of them, and the prince, were, however, staying as far away from any undergrowth as they could manage. Fortunately, the shade under the tall, straight-trunked pines creeping down from the higher slopes had choked out most of the tangled wire vine and choke tree which formed all but impenetrable thickets lower down in the foothills. That gave them—and the slash lizard—fairly long, relatively unobstructed sight lines. And assuming the local farmers' reports about the slash lizard's recent habits were accurate, then they ought to be—
A sudden bloodcurdling scream came out of the woods on the slopes above them.
No one who'd once heard an enraged slash lizard could ever mistake its war cry for anything else. The high-pitched, wailing whistle somehow still managed to sound like the tearing canvas of a sail splitting in a sudden gale. It was the voice of pure, distilled rage, raised in furious challenge, and the entire hunting party wheeled towards the sound as the broad, low-slung creature who'd made it erupted from the woods behind it.
It wasn't a fully mature slash lizard after all, a corner of Falkhan's mind noted as he muscled his eight-foot lizard spear around. This one was barely eleven feet from snout tip to tail tip, but all six legs churned furiously as it charged, gaping maw spread wide to show all four rows of wetly shining fangs.
The lieutenant was still wrestling his spear into position when Prince Cayleb shouted back at the charging lizard. The prince's shout was as obscene as it was loud, accusing the creature's mother of certain physically impossible actions, but content was less important than volume. Although it shouldn't have been possible for the slash lizard to hear anything through the sheer racket of its own bellow, it obviously heard Cayleb just fine. And, with the single-minded, territorial fury of its kind, it recognized the raised voice of a puny counterchallenge.
Falkhan swore even more obscenely than Cayleb as the hurtling predator's trajectory altered slightly. It thundered directly towards Cayleb, as fast as or faster than any charging horse, and not one of the prince's bodyguards was in position to intercept it.
Which, of course, was precisely what the crown prince had intended.
Cayleb turned his body almost at right angles to the slash lizard's charge. His lizard spear's long, broad, leaf-shaped head came down with the precision of a Siddarmark pikeman, his right foot extended slightly towards the lizard, and his left foot slid back and came down on the butt of his spear shaft to brace it. It all happened almost instantaneously, with the muscle-memory instinct of a swordsman and a polished perfection of form any of the prince's hunting mentors would have been proud to see. Then the lizard was upon him.
The creature's thick, squat neck stretched forward, the white lining of its opened mouth and gaping gullet shocking against the dark gray-green of its winter pelt as its jaws reached for the foolhardy foe who'd dared to invade its territory. And then the wailing thunder of its challenge turned into a high-pitched squall of anguish as the prince's razor-edged spearhead punched unerringly into the base of its throat.
The twenty-inch spearhead drove into the center of its chest, and its own hurtling weight hammered the knife-edged point home with a power no human arm could have achieved. The stout eighteen-inch crossbar a foot below the base of the spearhead prevented that same weight from driving it straight down the spear shaft to reach Cayleb. The shock of impact still nearly bowled the prince over, despite his impeccable form and braced position, but it didn't, and the slash lizard's squall turned into a choking scream as the spearhead punched straight into its heart.
The lizard slammed to a halt, writhing and thrashing in pinned agony, blood fountaining from opened mouth and nostrils. Its death throes almost accomplished what the force of its charge had failed to, shaking the crown prince like one of the port's mastiffs shaking a spider rat. It could still have killed Cayleb with a single blow from one of its massively clawed forefeet, but the prince clung to his spear shaft, using it to fend off the half-ton of mortally wounded fury.
To Lieutenant Falkhan, it seemed to take a brief eternity, but it couldn't actually have been anywhere near that long. The lizard's screams turned into bubbling moans, its frantic thrashing slowed, and then, with a last, almost pathetic groan, it folded in upon itself and went down in a twitching heap.
"Shan-wei take it!" the shortest of the men lying belly-down on the ridgeline snarled in disgust. "Why couldn't that accursed lizard have done its job?"
"Never really much chance of that, Sir," his second-in-command observed dryly. "That was as pretty a piece of work as I've ever seen."
"Of course there wasn't," the leader acknowledged sourly. "Still, I could hope, couldn't I?"
His subordinate simply nodded.
"Well," the leader sighed after a moment, "I suppose it just means we'll have to do it the hard way after all."
"Well," Ahrnahld Falkhan said, looking at his crown prince across the slash lizard's still shuddering carcass, "that was certainly exciting, wasn't it?"
Cayleb's answering laugh was exuberant, despite his chief bodyguard's less than fully approving tone. Then the prince braced one foot on the lizard's shoulder, gripped the spear shaft in both hands, bent his back, and grunted with effort as he pulled the long, lethal head free.
"Actually, it was," he agreed as he began scrubbing blood off the spear by wiping it through the low-growing near-heather.
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," Falkhan said repressively, and Cayleb grinned at him. The lieutenant tried to glower back, but despite his best efforts, his own grin leaked through. He started to say something else, then shook his head and looked at one of his subordinates instead.
"Payter."
"Yes, Sir?" Sergeant Payter Faircaster replied crisply, although he couldn't quite suppress a smile of his own. The prince's bodyguards might all deplore the way their charge's insistence on doing things like this complicated their own duties, but there was no denying that it was more satisfying to protect someone who wasn't afraid of his own shadow.
"Take someone back with you for the horses. And send someone else back to take a message to Rothar. Tell the Mayor to send out a cart to haul this—" he poked the lizard with the toe of one boot "—back with us. I'm sure," he gave the prince a sweet smile, "that His Majesty is going to be fascinated to see what sort of small game the Prince was out hunting this morning."
"Oh, that's a low blow, Ahrnahld!" Cayleb acknowledged, raising one hand in the gesture a judge used to indicate a touch in a training match.
"I know, Your Highness," Falkhan agreed, while the rest of the prince's bodyguards chuckled with the privilege of trusted retainers.
"Luhys," Faircaster said, pointing to one of the other troopers. "You and Sygmahn."
"Aye, Sergeant." Luhys Fahrmahn's broad mountain accent was more pronounced than usual, and he was still grinning as he touched left shoulder with right hand in salute and jerked his head at Sygmahn Oarmaster. "We'll do that thing."
He and Oarmaster handed their spears to Fronz Dymytree; then the two of them trotted off with Faircaster, leaving Dymytree and Corporal Zhak Dragoner with Falkhan and the prince.
"Now isn't that handy," the short man on the ridgeline murmured in much more satisfied tones.
"It suits me right down to the ground, Sir," his second-in-command agreed feelingly. Charisian Marines had a well-earned reputation, and they didn't get assigned as royal bodyguards for their sweet dispositions and retiring ways.
"Well," the leader said after a moment, "I suppose we'd best get to it. And at least we've got ground we can work with."
He and his men had been shadowing the prince's party ever since it left Rothar, and while he would have preferred for the lizard to do their job for them, the opportunities the present terrain offered were obvious to his experienced eye.
"Let's go. And remember—" He glared at the rest of his men. "—I'll personally cut the throat of anyone who makes a sound until the crossbows are into position."
Heads nodded, and eleven more men, all dressed in the same gray-brown and green garments, two of them armed with crossbows, climbed to their feet behind him and his sergeant.
"Just as a matter of curiosity, Your Highness," Lieutenant Falkhan asked as he paced the length of the slash lizard's outstretched body, "how did you come to hear about this?"
"Hear about it?" Cayleb repeated, eyebrows raised, and Falkhan shrugged.
"As a general rule, palace gossip spreads faster than a crown fire in a pinewood," he said. "In this case, though, I hadn't heard a whisper about this fellow." He jerked a thumb at the dead lizard. "That's why you were able to get this little expedition past me. I'm just curious about how you managed to hear about it before anyone else?"
"I don't really remember," Cayleb admitted, after considering it for a few seconds. He scratched one eyebrow, frowning thoughtfully. "I think it may have been from Tymahn, but I'm not really sure about that."
"Tymahn would've known about it if anyone did," Falkhan acknowledged. Tymahn Greenhill, one of King Haarahld's senior huntsmen for over eighteen years, had been Cayleb's chief hunting mentor, since the king's crippled leg had prevented him from filling that role himself.
"He does have a way of hearing about things like this," Cayleb agreed. "And he—"
"Get down, Your Highness!"
Ahrnahld Falkhan's head snapped up as a voice he'd never heard before in his life shouted the four-word warning.
The short man whirled in shock as the deep, powerful voice shouted from behind him.
He and his men had gotten to within fifty yards of their intended prey. The thick carpet of pine needles had muffled any sound their feet might have made, and the steep-sided gully of a dry, seasonal streambed's twisting course had provided cover for their approach. His two crossbowmen had just settled into firing position, bracing their weapons on the raised lip of the streambed and waiting patiently for the moving Marine lieutenant to clear their line of fire to their target. Not surprisingly, every scrap of the leader's attention at that moment was concentrated on the Charisian crown prince and his three remaining bodyguards.
Which was why he was totally unprepared to see the man charging across that same carpet of pine needles towards him with a drawn sword in his hands.
Lieutenant Falkhan reacted out of instinct and training, not conscious thought. His right hand swept towards the hilt of his sword, but his left reached out simultaneously. It caught Crown Prince Cayleb by the front of his tunic and yanked brutally.
The sudden heave took Cayleb completely by surprise. He unbalanced and went down in an ungainly sprawl . . . just as a crossbow bolt hissed through the space he'd occupied an instant before.
The same bolt could not have missed Falkhan by more than six inches, and a second bolt slammed into Zhak Dragoner's chest. The corporal crumpled backward without even a scream, and the lieutenant's blade hissed out of its sheath.
Fronz Dymytree tossed aside the lizard spears he'd been holding and snatched out his own cutlass almost as quickly as Falkhan's sword cleared the scabbard. The two surviving Marines, still reacting before conscious thought could catch up with them, moved to place themselves between the prince and the apparent source of the attack.
The assassins' leader just had time to draw his own sword before the interfering madman came bounding down into the dry watercourse towards him.
"Finish the job!" the leader shouted to his second-in-command. "I'll deal with this bastard!"
His subordinate didn't even hesitate. The leader's reputation as a master swordsman was well deserved. It was also one of the reasons he'd been chosen for this mission in the first place, and the second-in-command heaved himself up out of the streambed on the side closest to the Charisians.
"Come on!" he barked.
Falkhan swore viciously as at least ten men seemed to appear out of the very ground. Two of them carried crossbows, but all the rest had drawn swords, and the crossbowmen dropped their ungainly, slow-firing weapons and reached for their own swords.
"Run, Highness!" the lieutenant shouted as he sensed Cayleb bouncing back to his feet behind him.
"Fuck that!" the crown prince spat back, and steel scraped as he drew his own blade.
"God damn it, Cayleb, run!" Falkhan bellowed, and then the attackers were upon them.
The assassin leader was confident in his own skill, but a faint warning bell rang somewhere inside him as his unexpected opponent's peculiar stance registered. The mysterious newcomer held the hilt of his weapon in both hands, just above eye level, with one foot advanced and his entire body turned at a slight angle.
It was unlike any stance the assassin had ever seen, but he had no time to analyze it. Not before the hovering weapon hissed forward like a steel lightning bolt.
The sheer, blazing speed of the stroke took the assassin by surprise, but he was just as good as his reputation claimed. He managed to interpose his own broadsword, despite his opponent's speed and even though he'd never encountered an attack quite like this one.
It didn't help.
He had one brief instant for his eyes to begin to widen in shocked disbelief as the newcomer's blade sliced cleanly through his own, and then his head leapt from his shoulders.
Ahrnahld Falkhan parried frantically as the first sword came chopping in. Steel jarred on steel with an ugly, anvil-like clang, and he twisted aside as a second blade reached for him. He heard more metal clashing on metal, and swore with silent desperation as he realized Cayleb, instead of running while he and Dymytree tried to slow the assassins, had fallen into formation with them.
Only three things kept the crown prince and either of his Marines alive for the next few seconds. One was the two crossbowmen's need to discard one weapon and draw another, which slowed them and dropped them a little behind the other ten attackers. The second was the fact that all of the assassins coming at them had expected those crosswbows to do the job without any need to engage anyone hand-to-hand. They'd been just as surprised by the mysterious stranger's intervention as Falkhan had been by their own attack, and their rush towards the prince and his bodyguards was a scrambling, unorganized thing. They didn't come in together in a tightly organized attack.
And the third thing was that Cayleb had ignored Falkhan's order to run.
The first assassin to reach the crown prince leapt towards him, sword slashing, only to stumble back with a sobbing scream as Cayleb unleashed a short, powerful lunge. King Haarahld had imported a weapons master from Kyznetzov, in South Harchong, and while the Empire might be decadent, might be corrupt, and was definitely insufferably arrogant, it still boasted some of the finest weapons instructors in the world. Master Domnek was at least as arrogant as any Harchong stereotype, but he was also just as good at his craft as he thought he was . . . and a relentless taskmaster.
Most Safeholdian swordsmen were trained in the old school, but Cayleb had been taught by someone who recognized that swords had points for a reason. His savage, economic lunge drove a foot of steel through his opponent's chest, and he'd recovered back into a guard position before his victim hit the ground.
A second assassin came hurtling in on the crown prince, only to collapse—this time with little more than a gurgling moan—as Cayleb's second thrust went home at the base of his throat.
Falkhan was too heavily engaged against two other opponents to allow his attention to stray, but he was agonizingly aware that the assassins were concentrating their efforts against Cayleb. The fact that they were was probably the only reason Falkhan and Dymytree were still alive, yet he didn't expect to stay that way for long against three-to-one odds.
But then something new was added.
The assassins' second-in-command heard a scream from behind him and grinned nastily at the evidence that his commander had dealt with the interfering busybody who'd spoiled their ambush. But then he heard a second scream, and he backed off a couple of paces from the confusion of blades and bodies around the Charisian prince and his outnumbered bodyguards and turned to look back the way he'd come.
He just had time to take in the crumpled bodies of his two crossbowmen, and then the man who'd killed both of them was upon him in a swirl of steel.
Unlike his late commander, this assassin had no time to register anything peculiar about his opponent's stance. He was too busy dying as the newcomer drove a two-handed thrust straight through his lungs and heart, twisted his wrists, and recovered his blade, all in one graceful movement and without ever breaking stride.
Ahrnahld Falkhan got through to one of his attackers. The man fell back with a groan, dropping the dirk in his off hand as his left arm went limp, but then the lieutenant grunted in anguish as a sword got through his own guard and gashed the outside of his left thigh. He staggered, staying on his feet somehow, but his sword wavered, and another blade came driving at him.
He managed to beat the attack aside, carrying his attacker's sword to the left, but that left him uncovered on the right, and he sensed another assassin coming in on him.
And then that assassin went down himself, instantly dead, as a gory steel thunderbolt impacted on the nape of his neck like a hammer and severed his spinal cord.
Falkhan wasted no time trying to understand what had just happened. There were still armed men trying to kill his prince, and he used the distraction of the stranger's attack to finish off his wounded adversary. He heard Dymytree groan behind him, even as the dead man fell, and cursed as the Marine went down, uncovering Cayleb's left side. Falkhan knew the prince was exposed, but the wounded lieutenant was still too heavily engaged with his sole remaining opponent to do anything about it.
Cayleb saw Dymytree collapse from the corner of one eye. He knew what that meant, and he tried to wheel to face the man who'd cut down his bodyguard. But the two men already attacking him redoubled their efforts, pinning him in place. The prince's mind was clear and cold, focused as Master Domnek had taught him, yet beyond the shield of that focus was a stab of cold terror as he waited for Dymytree's killer to take him from the flank.
But then, suddenly, someone else was at his side. Someone whose flashing blade cut down two foes in what seemed a single motion.
The three surviving would-be assassins abruptly realized that the odds had somehow mysteriously become even. They fell back, as if by common consent, but if they'd intended to break off the attack, they'd left it too late.
Cayleb stepped forward, lunging in quarte. Another of his attackers folded forward over the bitter thrust of his blade, and the stranger who'd mysteriously materialized at his left side lopped off another head in almost the same instant. It was the first time Cayleb had actually heard of anyone managing that in a single, clean, one-handed blow—outside some stupid heroic ballad, at least—and the sole remaining assassin seemed as impressed by it as the crown prince. He whirled to flee, and Cayleb was in the act of recovering his stance, unable to interfere as the man turned to run. But the stranger's sword licked out with blinding speed, and the assassin shrieked as he was neatly hamstrung.
He collapsed, and the stranger stepped forward. A booted foot slammed down on the back of the wounded man's sword hand, evoking another scream as it crushed the small bones. The assassin twisted, his left hand scrabbling at the hilt of the dagger at his hip, and the stranger's sword licked out again, severing the tendons in his wrist.
It was over in a heartbeat, and then Cayleb found himself facing the stranger who had just saved his life across the sobbing body of the only surviving attacker.
"It occurred to me," the stranger said in an odd, clipped accent, strange sapphire eyes bright, "that you might want to ask this fellow a few questions about who sent him, Your Highness."