Raj Ahten pulled his dagger from its sheath. The wound in his collar hurt fiercely. The poison rushed through his bloodstream so fast, Raj Ahten did not know if even his thousands of endowments of stamina could save him.

The skin on his collarbone had already healed over the wound, sealing the arrowhead beneath. With a quick shove, Raj Ahten slammed his dagger into his collar, cutting it open, and pulled out the arrowhead.

With deadly accuracy, he then hurled the dagger at the jubilant archer.

He turned and began slowly running before more arrows fell, not even bothering to watch the archer on the castle wall take the dagger through the forehead, fall back under the force of the blow.

It was enough to hear the man’s death scream.

Raj Ahten ran a hundred yards over the grass. The poison made him weary, made it hard to raise one foot, then the next. His breath came slow and labored. He feared that the poison would asphyxiate him. The arrow had fallen close to his lungs, deep in his chest, and the poison had not been able to bleed out before the skin healed over the wound.

He struggled for each step, collapsed from fatigue. The wound in his shoulder hurt like death, and he could feel the poison clutching at his heart, holding it like a mighty fist.

He reached toward his men, begging aid, begging for healers. He had physics to care for him, herbalists and surgeons. Yet he was living so quickly, a minute to him now seemed like the better part of an hour. He feared he’d succumb long before an herbalist could arrive.

His heart beat sporadically, pumping hard. Raj Ahten gasped for each breath. With his endowments of hearing, Raj Ahten could hear every surge and gurgle of his failing heart. With his head pressed against the ground, he could hear worms stirring in the earth beneath him.

Then his heart stopped.

In the sudden silence, the sound of worms beneath the ground came louder, as if it were all the sound in the world.

Raj Ahten willed his heart to beat again, willed it to start. Beat, damn you. Beat . . .

He struggled for air, gasped. He slapped his own mailed chest in frustration.

His heart beat, weakly, once. Then it began to stutter, jerking spastically.

Raj Ahten concentrated. Felt his heart beat once, strongly. A second later, it came again. He gasped air that felt black in his lungs.

Silently, he cried out, willed his facilitators in far lands to give him more stamina, so that he might withstand this. “A king is coming,” he heard the words echoing through his memory. “A king who can kill you!”

Not like this, he begged the powers. Not so ignoble a death.