A pair of knives interrupted his efforts. They would have stabbed his neck had he not dodged with what seemed inhuman alacrity. At a crouching run Karna dashed back into the house, and stormed out of the front door, smashing it. A familiar monster surged inside him, straining to be let out. Never again. He willed the monster back into its cage. Karna stumbled out into the alleyway, crashing against a wall. He could see a faint pillar of red on the horizon. Black smoke rose into the sky. It is going to be a night of blood. He unsheathed the dagger he had borrowed from the assassin. Time to rattle the stars.

II

The watery streets made it easy to hear the sound of footfalls. Not that it was needed. Angry whispers echoed in these ruins.

‘They never told us he was this trained,’ an assassin hissed. ‘He has hunted down five of us.’

‘They were novices,’ the cold voice of a woman answered. ‘Good they were culled out.’

‘But he is—’

‘Just a man. And Men fall. Knife into that alley mouth and climb to the roof. I will check here. Eyes on the sides and back.’

A shadow edged into view and stopped no more than an arms-length away. The woman twisted even as Karna let loose the quarrel. He missed. The woman did not. The dagger struck him just beneath his left arm. Another dagger embedded itself in the wall beside Karna’s head. But Karna still had the second quarrel lodged. He pressed the release, and the woman tumbled back with the quarrel lodged in her chest, screaming her final defiance even as she fell dead.

It was the last of his weapons, and his fifth wound of the night. A sword had found his thigh in the last skirmish. Fortunately, swords were never poisoned. Too risky for the swordsman. Not that it mattered. His internal exercise at slowing down his blood was in shambles. He was weakening with each heartbeat.

Suddenly, Karna saw more shadows take shape around him. The woman’s scream had alerted his hunters to his position and Karna had been too distracted by his wounds to move. The killers converged. A refined voice reached him from the balcony of one of the abandoned houses. ‘Settle down, Highmaster. It’s over.’

Karna surveyed the assassins. Ten. Their gait reflected their training. In his poisoned, exhausted state, he could probably take down more than half of them before he went down himself. That was assuming there weren’t more lurking in the darkness. His thoughts drifted to his nephew, Sudama No. He could not go down. He had vowed to look after the boy. It was a vow he was not going to break. But poisons cared not for the promises of men. Buy time. Karna sank against the wall behind him, close to where the voice, perhaps belonging to the leader of the assassins, had come from.