He met her eyes. Shoved his big steel knife into the nearest mud-man as though wedging it into a tree for safekeeping, and ripped a leather pouch from around his neck, its strap snapping. “Spark! Watch this!”

She kept her eyes on it as it sailed toward her and, to her own immense surprise, caught it out of the air. She had never in her life caught—. Another mud-man jumped on Dag.

“Stick it in!” he bellowed, going down again. “Stick it in the malice!”

Knives. The pouch had two knives. She pulled one out. It was made of bone. Magic knives? “Which?” she cried frantically.

“Sharp end first! Anywhere!”

The malice was starting to move toward Dag. Feeling as though her head was floating three feet above her body, Fawn thrust the bone knife deeply into the thing’s thigh.

The malice turned back toward her, howling in surprise. The sound split her skull. The malice caught her by the neck, this time, and lifted her up, its hideous face contorting.

“No! No!” screamed Dag. “The other one!”

Her one hand still clutched the pouch; the other was free. She had maybe one second before the malice shook her till her neck snapped, like a kitchen boy killing a chicken. She yanked the spare bone blade out of its sheath and jammed it forward. It skittered over something, maybe a rib, then caught and went in, but only a couple of inches. The blade shattered. Oh no—!

She was falling, falling as if from a great height. The ground struck her a stunning blow. She shoved herself up once more, everything spinning around her.

Before her eyes, the malice was slumping. Bits and pieces sloughed off it like ice blowing from a roof. Its awful, keening voice went up and up and higher still, fading out yet leaving shooting pains in her ears.

And gone. In front of her feet was a pile of sour-smelling yellow dirt. The first knife, the one with the blue haft that hadn’t worked, lay before it. In her ears was silence, unless she’d just gone deaf.

No, for a scuffle began again to her right. She whirled, thinking to snatch up the knife and try to help. Its magic might have failed, but it still had an edge and a point. But the three mud-men still on their feet had stopped trying to tear the patroller apart, and instead were scrambling away, yowling. One bowled her over in its frantic flight, apparently without any destructive intent. This time, she stayed on her hands and knees. Gasping. She had thought her body must run out of shakes in sheer exhaustion, but the supply seemed endless. She had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering, like someone freezing to death. Her belly cramped.