The four guards he’d chosen balked at the task, but it didn’t take more than a few clouts to get them moving. Bikker must have really put a fear into them, Malden thought. They waited for the captain to make the necessary gesture to lower the barrier, then dashed out through the gates brandishing their polearms. They jabbed and thrusted at the ogre the way a swain pokes at a pig to scare it into motion, but the ogre easily fended off their blows with his spear. One glaive blade got past his defense and scored a hit on his hairy stomach, but Gurrh just laughed. The blade bent and then snapped off its pole.

“Sadu’s blood an’ balls,” Kemper said, astonished.

“All the old stories say how hard it is to slay an ogre, that no normal weapon can cut their furry pelts. Come—this is our time to act. We must be quick.”

The thief and the card sharp ran across the grass toward the fence. Malden slipped through between two uprights while Kemper just walked through them. The two of them kept very low as they hurried across the garden. Malden was terrified that Bikker would turn around and see them, but his attention seemed absorbed by the ogre.

This was exactly according to plan. Thanks to Croy’s recklessness, Hazoth had come to expect an attack on the house—a direct, frontal attack of the kind a knight would make against a fortress. The ogre appeared to be providing exactly that.

Which was not to say this was going to be easy.

Malden and Kemper slipped around the back of the house. Only one guard remained in the garden, and he was doing his best to see what was happening at the front while not technically deserting his post. Bikker had trained and disciplined these guards into a formidable fighting force, but he’d only had a few days to do it. He could not have completely broken all their bad habits in that time.

The back door of the house, which led into the preparatory room behind the dining chamber, was in deep shadow. There were no torches or other lights back there—they would have served no purpose but to ruin the night vision of the guard. Even better, Malden saw that the high window above the preparatory door was open to catch the night air, as it had been a quite warm day. Perfect.