The Napan had thrust her shortsword up into a Seerdomin’s head from below. The blade jammed between the mandibles. Instead of pulling, Detoran pushed, sending the victim and weapon flying back to foul the two warriors beyond. With the broadsword in her right hand extended, she was keeping another Seerdomin at bay. He was swinging his shorter weapons at the blade in an effort to bat it aside so he could close, but Detoran made her heavy blade dance and weave as if it was a duellist’s rapier.

Mallet’s attention fixed on the two recovering Seerdomin. A third warrior was pulling the fallen Seerdomin away. The healer snapped the crossbow up and depressed the trigger. The weapon bucked in his hands.

One of the recovering Seerdomin shrieked, a quarrel buried to its leather fins in his chest. He sagged back.

A tumbling body knocked Mallet from his feet as he was about to reload. Cursing, the healer fell back against a side wall and made to kick the corpse away with his boots as he fumbled for a quarrel, then he saw that it was Antsy. Not yet dead, though his chest was sheathed in blood. From the sounds above, Trotts was pushing his way back up the stairs.

He twisted round at a shout from Detoran. She had lunged with her broadsword, breaking her timing to dip her blade round a desperate parry, then sliding the edge up and under the Seerdomin’s helm, ripping open the side of the man’s neck – even as his other axe stashed a wild arc, straight for Detoran’s head.

The Napan threw her left shoulder into its path.

Chain snapped, blood sprayed. The axe-blade cut clear, carrying with it most of the muscle of Detoran’s shoulder.

She reeled. Then, blood spurting, righted herself and rushed the remaining two Seerdomin.

The nearest one threw one of his axes.

The Napan chopped it aside then swung a backhand slash that the man barely managed to block. Detoran closed, dropping her sword and jamming her fingers into the helm’s eye-slit. The momentum of her rush carried her round the man, twisting his head to follow.

Mallet heard an audible pop of vertebrae, even as he finished loading his crossbow. He raised it—

The last Seerdomin’s axes flashed.

Detoran’s right arm, stretched out with the fingers still snagged in the visor, was severed halfway between shoulder and elbow.

The second axe drove deep between her shoulder-blades, throwing her forward to slap face first against the landing’s wall.

The Seerdomin moved forward to tug the second axe free.

Mallet’s quarrel vanished into the man’s right arm-pit. He buckled, then collapsed in a clatter of armour.

The healer, setting another quarrel into the slot, clambered to where Detoran still leaned, upright, face first against the wall. The rush of blood from her wounds had slowed to turgid streams.

He did not need to reach out to touch the Napan to know that she was dead.