From behind his stained-glass window, Sylvarresta watched the assassins reach the halfway point on the stone wall of the keep; then the King opened the window and blew a soft, shrill whistle.

As one, his soldiers leapt up and poured oil down the keep’s walls, tossing great iron cauldrons over as they emptied. The oil did not have the desired effect. It had cooled too much since sunset, and though the assassins cried in dismay at their burns and some plummeted when swept from the walls by falling cauldrons, more than twenty still scrambled up the walls, swift as lizards.

The guards atop the Dedicates’ Keep drew swords and pikes. From the King’s Keep, some hundred yards distant, archers let arrows fly. A few more assassins plummeted, but Raj Ahten’s knights were frighteningly swift, terrifyingly determined.

King Sylvarresta had imagined the assassins would run when they met resistance. Instead they scurried faster, reaching the tops of the parapet, where razor wire hindered them. Sylvarresta’s soldiers hacked at the assassins, so that a dozen more plummeted from the keep’s tower.

Still, seven assassins won the top of the tower, where their incredible skills as fighters came into play. The assassins moved so swiftly, Sylvarresta’s men could not well defend themselves. Yet four more assassins got cut down, while a dozen defenders were slaughtered.

The three remaining assassins hurtled down the steps into the Dedicates’ Keep—just as the King’s pikemen rushed from the guardroom beneath the portcullis.

The assassins ignored the guards, instead leapt to the iron grate that covered one low door to the Dedicates’ Hall. Though the door was barred with heavy iron, two assassins grabbed a bar and pulled, ripping it from the wall, dislodging two-hundred-pound stones set with mortar.

The third assassin faced the pikemen, ready to defend.

But these pikemen were no common soldiers.

Captain Derrow and Captain Ault came, side by side, holding back nothing. Captain Ault stabbed at the assassin’s head, a lightning thrust.

The assassin dodged, his own short sword snaking out, biting Ault’s gloved hand. The assassin was a dark monster, draped in robes of black, a man whose speed astonished. He shifted on his feet, weaving from side to side so quickly that no commoner could have landed a blow. He drew a second knife, his hands whirling in the deadly Dancing Arms style.

In that second, the door to the Dedicates’ Keep screamed as if in agony. The two assassins pulled the door wide. One assassin bolted through the door.

Captain Derrow swung his pike as if it were an axe. An assassin by the door took a firm knock to the head.

The assassin guard ducked. Ault anticipated his move and lunged. Ault slammed the pike into the man’s chest, then lifted, flinging the assassin up and aside.

Ault tossed away the pike, drew a long dagger, and bolted into the Dedicates’ Keep.

* * *