There was a deafening roar, a blinding flash and the air imploded with a piercing whistle. Reynevan bolted, hard on Trutwein’s heels. Bisclavret dashed after them, having first managed to slash several of the bruisers—who were temporarily blinded and deafened—with his Andalusian navaja.

The trap had been carefully laid, however, and their escape route was cut off. When they rushed out into the street, they ran straight into a fierce brawl. Scharley and Samson were resisting a massed attack by more thugs.

“Take them alive! Alive!” thundered a command. Reynevan knew that voice.

He felt somebody seize him by the shoulder. He drew his dagger, slashed vigorously, twisted the hilt in his hand, stabbed from above, spun around, made a powerful reverse cut right after it, using his momentum and position, from right to left. He heard a cry; blood splashed his face and two bodies fell at his feet. Blood spattered his face again, but this time it was the work of Scharley and his curved falchion. Someone grabbed him again, at the same time seizing his wrist above the dagger. There was a hollow thud and the grip loosened. It was Samson, who had appeared at his side, felling the assailants one after another with vicious blows of the goedendag. But more attackers kept coming.

“Run for it!” yelled Bisclavret, stabbing and slashing with the navaja. “Fast! Follow me!”

Scharley darted after the Frenchman, wielding the falchion as he ran, attackers quailing before him. Reynevan was grabbed again, but the man howled and recoiled as the dagger plunged into his eye. As Reynevan fought off another attack, knife grated against knife, steel against steel, sending up sparks. Fortunately, the knifeman fell like an ox in a slaughterhouse after a blow from the goedendag.

Reynevan snatched a pot wrapped in straw from inside his jerkin. Five bombs were still in the merchant’s chambers in Milk Street. That one was the sixth.

“Ignis! Atrox! Yah, Dah, Horah!”

There was a hiss, a loud blast and the street was lit up by a powerful explosion that splashed liquid fire in all directions, sticking to everything within range. Everything in the vicinity caught fire. That included a woodpile, the whitewashed wall of a house, the cobbles and the slops in the gutter. And several attackers. The screams of the men being burned rose up to the starry sky. Then Reynevan recognised a familiar shape in the light of the blaze. A black cloak, a black doublet and black shoulder-length hair. An avian face and a nose like a bird’s beak.

“Take them alive!” yelled the Wallcreeper, shielding his face from the roaring flames. “I want them alive!”

“Run!” Samson tugged Reynevan, paralysed by the horror, by the arm. “Run!”

“Fire! Fire!”

They ran as fast as they could as the lane behind them thundered with the sound of their pursuers’ footsteps.

“Take them alive! Aliiive!”

“Fire! Fiiiire!”