Daniel staggered and went down on one knee, letting out a grunt of surprise.

There were wounds on both of his legs—punctures, deep stabs. Neither wound had hit one of the big arteries, or he’d already be unconscious, but they were right through the quadriceps muscles, and had to have been agonizing.

He snarled and attempted to rise. Halfway there, he faltered and went down again. Training, courage, and fortitude get you only so far. A deep enough wound on either leg could have taken Daniel out of the fight. He had them on both.

Aristedes hadn’t come away clean from the exchange, though. There was a deep cut on his right arm, where Daniel’s knife had caught him hard. Flesh hung from a flap of skin. Blood flowed, but his arm still seemed to work. If Aristedes lived long enough and if he kept the arm, he was going to have one hell of a scar to show off later.

But that wasn’t going to matter much to Daniel.

The sorcerer switched his knife to his left hand and stared at Daniel with flat eyes. “Kids like you. Haven’t learned the price of doing business. When to trade pain for victory.”

He blurred into motion again, and Daniel lifted his knife. Then the younger man cried out and fell to his side, clutching at his right arm with his left hand. His knife landed on the floor and spun away from him, eventually coming to rest against Aristedes’ feet.

The sorcerer took his time transferring his own knife to his left hand and picking up Daniel’s. He tested the blade’s balance and edge and said, “Serviceable.” He carefully wiped the blood from Daniel’s blade against the leg of his trousers, closed it, and slipped it into the pocket of his bathrobe. Then he fixed the young man with a nasty smile, raised his own blade over his head, so that Daniel’s blood dripped down it and fell on his upraised arm.

And he started to chant.

I felt the magic gathering at once. It wasn’t particularly powerful, but that was by my own standards. Magic doesn’t absolutely require a ton of horsepower to be dangerous. It took Aristedes maybe ten seconds to summon enough will and focus for whatever he was doing, and I stood there clenching my fists and my jaw in impotent fury. Daniel saw what was happening and found an old can in the detritus on the floor beside him. He threw it at Aristedes in an awkward, left-handed motion, but came nowhere close to striking the sorcerer.

Aristedes pointed the knife at Daniel, his eyes reptilian, hissed a word, and released the spell.

Michael’s eldest son arched his back and let out a strangled scream of agony. Aristedes repeated the word and Daniel contorted in pain again, his back bowing more than I would have thought possible.

I stifled a furious scream of my own and looked away as the sorcerer bent and twisted the energy of Creation itself into a means of torment. Looking away was almost worse: Aristedes’ young followers were watching with a sick fascination. Daniel screamed until he was out of breath, and then began to strangle himself as he tried to keep it up. One of the kids bent suddenly and began retching onto the floor.