The first dog, a nightmare of scars with eyes meaner than the worst thug Els had seen, lunged at Silma. Saliva thicker than stale water, layered with foam, trailed down its fangs. It didn't howl. It barked. Not in warning; in a promise of death.
Silma didn't flinch. Her smile didn't even twitch.
She yanked her empty right fist down as if gripping a blade while she swung her left fist offbeat horizontally.
For a heartbeat, Els held her breath. It caught in her throat as a silver crescent moon formed in front of the lunging dog. Tonio squeezed her hand, even though Silma was much slower than he was.
The dog crashed against the twin silvery arcs, its momentum unstopped, its fangs about to tear Silma's neck. Just as they snapped shut, its skull parted. The fangs never snapped.
They couldn't.
Instead, the dog's mouth split into four pieces that flew beside her. Its body followed, smashing the ground in a spray of blood and spilt organs.
How...
Before she could finish the thought, Silma cleaved upward. A curved dagger glinted in the lamppost light. It severed the shaft of the first arrow shot from the tannery's window, both metallic parts clanging at her feet.
The next dog lunged, and a man rushed before Silma. He thrust his long spear into the open jaws of the dog, impaling and lifting it in the same motion. The dog whimpered, its blood slicking the shaft and dripping onto the rounded helmet of the man, down to his curved lips.
"Leave it to us, leader." He swiped his spear at the pack, hurling the dog onto the others. The spearhead carved a line on the pavement, as if he challenged anyone to cross it.
Another man sprang from the side, the red tassel of his sword fluttering. The blade found the eye of a dog. Before it could collapse, he beheaded another.
Shields and blades crashed against the dogs from the sides and behind. As they fought off the encirclement of stray dogs, a man lifted his broad bow at the center of their formation. An arrow vanished from his quiver, reappearing on his drawn string. He released it, and another, and another, firing a barrage. Each of his arrows drilled through one of the Sump Dogs mid-flight.
Metal shards rained around three women in revealing red silk. They danced beside the man, hurling spiked fans at the remaining arrows with each shift of their long, exposed legs. Their weapons sawed through projectiles before delicately landing between their fingers.
They're not dancing.They guide them. They have truths. No... at least half of them anchored one! Even Tonio's warm palm didn't ease the icy shiver overtaking Els. But the deadliest of them all was still Silma.
Her smile twisted like a knife in a wound each time blood soaked the sole of her shoes. "We can't waste time with small dogs when Garrick wants the old one, can we?"
Her curved dagger vanished into her broad sleeve. A straight knife replaced it. Smaller... at first.
Before Els' wide eyes, it grew longer than a sword, a spear, finally stopping when it reached the size of a beam thicker than a man. Drowned in the colossal shadow of her weapon, the men butchering the pack in front of Silma instantly fell back behind her.
She swung it no slower than her curved dagger.
It cleaved across the pack protecting the building in a perfect half-circle. Legs clawed at the ground, rushing for a couple more steps before stilling. Behind them, dozens of dogs' bodies collapsed to the ground. Dismembered in their charge. Bleeding beneath Silma's steps to the door.
Her men moved, deflecting arrows, while questions tore at Els' mind
Kael had told her about Brannick's surreal speed and strength. She had laughed it off as exaggerated or a poor joke to scare her. But Silma... she couldn't stop trembling... if she was that strong, then Kael must have told her the truth.
And above them, the man who controlled these monsters... beneath the strangled whispers of those indebted to him, his reputation as the uncrowned lord of the slums... She couldn't imagine how powerful Garrick truly was.
Her mind, her legs, even, throbbed in a plea for escape so much that she clamped the fabric of her pants. She'd better not even try to guess anything about Garrick.
Tonio slid his palm over her mouth. She lifted her eyes to his face, to the finger he pressed against his quivering lips. For how long had she breathed louder than a dog that chased a thieving cat?
"Dangerous like Brannick. Monster. Silence." He kept his palm on her mouth for ten breaths. It was tense against her skin, subtle tremors running through a coat that barely hid the tense veins on his neck.
He slid toward Kael. Kneeling beside him, he shook him. "No rest. Leave."
No reactions. He tried more, but Els' gaze drifted back to Silma. Despite everything, she couldn't wrench her eyes off the woman. Fear, of course, was part of the reason, but not only... In a world of burly men, she had wrested a position of leadership by controlling food distribution and her strength. Somehow, and she knew it was weird, wrong even, she admired her.
Very wrong... She closed her eyes.
When she reopened them, Silma stood at the door.
The Sump Dogs men shifted from arrows to heavy rubble and burning water. Before they could hit her, one of her men twirled a cane beside her. He pulled on it, and colored paper burst at its edge.
Rubble collapsed on it with an impossible clang. No tears, or even a nick smeared the black cask painted on its surface. Scalding water rolled down the paper without drenching it.
"Thank you, dear." Silma nodded, then gestured to a man barely taller than Kael, but broad like a door. "If you would."
The man slammed his iron gauntlets, veins squirming on chiselled arms jutting out of studded pauldrons. "Of course, leader."
He backed ten steps, bent, his right shoulder in front of him. He crashed into the thick metal. Hinges groaned, a cloud of rust engulfing him. The door caved in under his shoulder, but didn't collapse yet.
The screech of metal bending from inside echoed, but the door, as bent as it was, still held.
"Pathetic fortifications can't stop me!" Roaring, the man crouched. Both fists flat against the door's warped surface, he exploded upward.
With a shrill snap, the fortifications shattered. Furniture that kept the door shut crashed, and people screamed to dodge inside.
The stocky man dusted his hands before gesturing theatrically at Silma that she could enter, just as the door slowly toppled back.
BOOM
It crashed, hurling dust into the street, the sound like a collapsing building.
Els shielded her eyes with the sheet in the doorway.
"WHAT'S HAPPENING—"
She snapped back at Kael's scream. Wide-eyed, Tonio shoved both of his hands on Kael's mouth, while Kael's wide blue eyes darted across the room as if he didn't remember passing out.
When they landed on Joss' corpse, they narrowed instantly. The fight, his wounds, and the satisfaction of protecting his friends before exhaustion devoured him all crashed down. So did the urgency clawing at his stomach. He tapped Tonio's hands as Els rushed to his side.
The rat-man whispered, "Garrick men. Bad," before releasing his mouth.
"How long have I been out cold?" He lifted his palm before Els could answer. "Not long enough to miss Silma's attack, I guess. The noise... She brought the door down, right?"
Els nodded.
"She's busy, then... for now. She'll look for Joss once she's done with Old Fen. We get the hell out of here before she can." He pushed himself up, but his legs instantly tumbled. He fell back on his palms, sweat trailing down his straightening nose. "Shit... put relic 78 on and carry me, Tonio."
Tonio fished the round glasses from his coat's inner pocket, slid them on his face, and heaved Kael on his shoulder like a burlap bag. He paused for a heartbeat, his brow creasing. "Priest..."
Kael gazed at the machetes, Joss' bloodied shirt, and the pouch at his belt. "You didn't... Take everything, Els. Remove the arrow from his neck. We must muddy the waters—"
Els tore Joss' pouch and holsters from his belt. Then, she sheathed the machetes before pointing at the arrow. "There is a whole pack of dead dogs outside. Can we... make it look as if they killed him?"
"She'll think Old Fen betrayed him. Good." Kael nodded on Tonio's shoulder. "Scratch him everywhere, Tonio, as if a dog had bitten his neck. Not here. In the alley." He pointed at Joss' broken teeth. "Get them too. Leave no clues behind."
"On it." Els picked up the broken teeth, then emptied the little water they had left on the blanket Kael had slept on.
In under five breaths, she mopped up the blood on the pavement until the shelter looked less like a fight scene and more like any nasty dwelling in the beggar street. After finding no large traces of blood, she tied the blanket around Joss' side and neck.
Kael patted Tonio's back, and the rat-man picked the exiled priest up with his free hand. They gathered at the entrance, Els clasping the blanket, Tonio's knuckles white.
Kael's eyes sharpened. They would get out while the war took up Silma's attention. It was their only option. Still, upside down against Tonio's back, he glanced at the shelter.
The pungent scent of death drifted from the holes in the junk wall and the open ceiling, along with the cold of early spring. The lamppost still flickered with its annoying buzz, and everything was dirty. But he only saw the pit in the ground around which they had eaten and laughed, the wall they had slept against while trying to understand truths, and the corner in which he had trained with Tonio.
He closed his eyes. Not the best home. Not even a house, just a beggar's dwelling they had wrestled for themselves. But their home. One he'll remember as warm. One they had to give up to survive.
A steely glint entered his eyes when he reopened them. "To the alley."