“That’s right, ladies,” he said aloud. “Something wicked. Just give it a kick, eh?” He drew his sword and took his buckler off his hip.

“Stay close,” he said in his best Etruscan.

The woman whimpered.

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said quietly.

The horses were spooked, right enough. Every head was up; eyes were rolling, and tails lashing.

Something red-black flashed over the wall.

M’bub Ali’s stallion screamed and reared.

And then the thing came over the back of the horses. Long Paw had time to be afraid; the face like a suckerfish, the body too thin to be real.

It had talons as long as daggers, wicked as stilettos, and a long, glowing sword in its right hand.

Brown’s mare kicked at it; one of M’bub’s horses landed a bite and slowed it.

Long Paw’s blade dropped under his buckler, and his left foot slid forward.

As it crossed the back of the horses, it went from saddle to saddle, and the horses panicked, and where it stepped on a bare back, the talons ripped flesh from the packhorse, but the stallion and two of the mares stood their ground.

Long Paw watched it for a little more than one beat of his heart. And then it was all training.

It was so fast that Long Paw had to start his rising cut, left to right, while the thing was still coming over the back of the last mare, four paces away.

The red-black thing loosed a scarlet bolt as it leapt. The steel and wood buckler in Long Paw’s left hand took the bolt, and became slag, and heat burned Long Paw’s hand right through the steel gauntlet under the buckler, burning two fingers off his hand and scorching the rest.

His cut severed a reaching, taloned hand and his point went unerringly into the thing’s sucker face even as its sword cut the last four inches off his own . . . a late parry with a magical sword. His blade went right through it—no shock of bone—and the whole weight of the thing slammed him off his feet.

He fell back, and hit his head. He didn’t go out, but the burning hot, rubbery weight of it pushed him to action—talons screamed across his thigh, and he felt the poison hit him.

His volition started to leak out of him.

Donna Beatrice slammed her dagger into its whipcord-thin back. She’d killed chickens and she’d killed sheep and her arm was sure; even facing something that defied reason, her hand did its task. She severed its spinal cord. She was screaming like a banshee, but her knife was sure. Its sword clattered to the ground.

Long Paw felt it go, because for almost a full second, it had been him. It was a terrible emptying; one moment he burned with power, and the next he was an empty vessel.

Long Paw lay in the mud, staring up at the rain-laden sky.