She was very nearly too quick for it, Tynisa turning as she heard the faint scuffle, but the arrow sliced across her shoulder nonetheless, making her yell with pain and shock. By the same token she was very nearly too slow. So thin was the difference between a clean escape and a fatal strike.

The archer was up on a rooftop and Tynisa was already moving towards the building’s shadow to put her out of sight. There were men bursting out on them, though, eight or so of a varied and well-armed crew. The leader, a rangy halfbreed, had an axe already raised behind his head and hurled it even as Tynisa spotted him, the weapon spinning end over end towards Tisamon. The Mantis did not sway aside from it but caught it in his left hand, the force of its impact spinning him on his heel. Then the axe had left his hand, flying at an angle to embed itself in the chest of the archer.

Tynisa’s rapier was now in her hand and she fell into line behind it. The ancient weapon, Mantis-crafted from before the revolution, took her straight at a barrel-chested Beetle-kinden in chainmail. He swung his great mace at her, flicking it through the air faster than she expected and then dragging it across her approach on the backswing, forcing her to keep her distance. He had a buckler shield in his off-hand and, when she drove towards him, he tried to take her point with it. She turned her wrist and snaked the rapier past the shield’s edge, gashing his arm and then dropping back as the mace swept over once more.

There were two other men shifting to either side of the mace-wielder. One was a Spider-kinden spearman, his face painted with darts of white, and the other was the tall halfbreed axe-thrower who held a second axe now, a two-handed piece. She gave ground before them, watching their approach. She decided they were all skilled, but not used to working with each other. She could exploit that.

Tisamon passed behind them, keeping ever on the move whilst a full half-dozen men tried to pin him down. He closed for a second, his claw cutting and dancing, making them scatter, and one of them went down, blood spurting from over his steel gorget.

Abruptly Tynisa went sideways, slipping under the thrust of the spear to lay open a line of blood across the Spider’s ribs. The axeman tried for her but held his stroke as the mace-wielder stepped in its path. Grimacing with pain, the spearman was lunging for her, anticipating she would continue her move further out.

She stayed close to him, still within the reach of his weapon, coming up almost within his extended arms to put an elbow across his nose. He reeled back and, while the mace-wielder tried to avoid hitting him, she drove her sword past the man’s shield.

He twisted aside and the point struck his chainmail, but it clove through the metal rings with only a little more force and went deep into him, so that the mace fell from his hand. He tried to clutch the blade but it sheared across his fingers. Then she was darting away, the greataxe sweeping past where she had just been. She rounded on the two of them, seeing the spear coming in towards her. Instead of staying back she moved in and caught the spearhead with the guard of her rapier, driving it towards the ground, using her sword-hand as a pivot for her whole body, dancing over the spearhead and bringing a knee down on the shaft. It was too good a piece to snap, but it bent and then sprang back, and she leapt past the spearman’s startled, painted face and, when she had passed, her sword followed and slashed his throat.

Tisamon was still fighting, one against four now, so she turned to the axeman, who was staring at her and backing away. She fell into her duelling stance, began advancing step by step. To her surprise and gratification he turned and ran away.

She looked round for Tisamon, saw him trading blows still with three men. They were obviously the pick of the lot. There was another Spider whose rapier moved like light and shadow, the second a rogue Ant-kinden complete with shortsword and tall shield, and the final man was some kinden she did not recognize, white-haired and whirling some kind of bladed chain about his head.

As she moved to join Tisamon something cut across her back, just a brief slash of the blade. She whirled, ducking into a crouch, silently cursing herself that she had not heard the newcomer.

He stood there sneering, a rapier in his hand, a tall, angular figure that she recognized.

Piraeus the Mantis-kinden, and he had a lean and hungry smile on him.

‘Enough play, Spider-girl,’ he said. ‘Let’s try it for blood now. Then we’ll see who’s best.’

‘Aren’t you going to ring a bell?’ Stenwold said softly, holding them at his sword’s point, trying to keep his eyes on both the men who were trying to reach for him.

‘A bell?’ Thalric asked, wrong-footed for a moment.

‘Oh you know, sudden betrayal, with Tisamon about to kick the doors down to save my sorry hide. It just reminded me of poor Elias in Helleron. Never mind. If you want my sword you’ll have to take it, and I’ll make that point-first if I can.’

Thalric glanced at Scadran, who began to move forward on Stenwold, his two companions going left and right so that the Beetle was now in a circle of five. He kept turning and turning, sword first this way and then that, waiting for the moment when everything turned to chaos.

‘Master Maker,’ Thalric said, ‘I would rather take you alive, but that’s just personal sentiment.’ Arianna had joined him there, alongside Lieutenant Graf, and he saw the way Stenwold’s eyes followed her for a moment. ‘You’ve been in the trade too long,’ he said harshly, ‘to lament over that. Sentiment is folly, Master Maker.’

‘Perhaps I just have higher expectations of people,’ Stenwold spat. He lunged at Scadran abruptly, making the big man stumble away, then he dropped back into the centre of the circle.

With a pained look Thalric extended his hand towards Stenwold, fingers open. ‘Scadran, take him now. If you can’t, I’ll shoot the man myself. Go!’

On the word ‘Go’ one of the grimy, high-up windows to his left exploded in shards of dirty glass and the man directly across from Scadran was punched from his feet, dead even before he hit the ground with a hole torn in his chest. In the echoes ensuing, like small thunder in the space of the warehouse, Scadran fell back quickly. Only one of his band tried to rush Stenwold. The luckless man had got a hand on the Beetle’s collar before he realized he was alone in his courage, and Stenwold rammed his sword up to the hilt in his stomach. Even as the dying man dropped away his sword was wrenched from its scabbard as Stenwold took it and ducked low. Thalric’s sting scorched across his shoulder, charring his robes black, and then Stenwold was running for whatever shelter he could find. A stack of crates suggested itself, but the top one exploded into splinters even as he neared it. He glanced back wildly, and just then there was another hollow boom from above, and then two more. Another man of Scadran’s pack was dashed to the ground, and the one next to him pierced through the leg by a finger-long missile that then buried itself entirely in the floor beyond.

Stenwold kept running. Thalric’s shots smashed a jagged hole in the planks of the floor nearest the entrance and he veered away, knowing he was being drawn full circle. He put on more speed, as much as he could manage, and raised his sword high. If this was to be it, if there was no more than this, then he would make an account of himself that even Tisamon would respect.

Another sting blazed past his cheek and he suddenly changed his mind, diving to one side, bouncing awkwardly on the floor where he had intended merely to roll, but ending up crouching behind a solid-looking box. In a second he felt the shudder as Thalric’s sting seared into it.