The Barbed Wire Cat

Robert Earl

            In the darkness, the thing called Skitteka sat and schemed and stroked his pet. A single lantern lit his stone-gnawed burrow. The guarded flame produced barely enough light to lend a twinkle to his beady eyes, although it was sufficient to set the blonde of his pet's hair aglow. Everything else was in shadow.

            Skitteka hadn't had a pet before. Apart from anything else, not many humans could have borne his touch. Most would have cowered or flinched, or just broken and tried to run. But Adora was not most humans. She purred as he dragged his filthy claws through her hair, and pressed herself into his verminous caress with every semblance of pleasure.

            'I wonder, little cat,' Skitteka said, 'how long I will have to wait to become chief overseer.'

            Despite his bulk Skitteka's voice was a high-pitched shriek, like nails being drawn down a slate. Adora seemed not to mind. Quite the opposite, when she cocked her head to listen it was with a keen interest and that, at least, she didn't have to fake.

            'The slaves all wonder the same, master,' she told him, her voice perfectly modulated to that sweet spot that lay just between terror and adulation; that sweet spot she'd spent so many hours practising. 'They see that you are the most powerful, and the most magnificent. And they fear that when you become chief overseer they will have to work harder.'

            Skitteka hissed with pleasure, the twin chisels of his incisors gleaming in the scant light.

            'They are right,' he boasted, his claws scratching deeper into her scalp to show his pleasure. 'That fool Evasqeek doesn't know how to handle humans. He should be removed. Replaced.'

            The tremble in his paw belied the defiance in its voice and Adora felt a flash of frustration.

            So she thought about her father. He had died when she had been a toddler, all she remembered about him was a kindly face, the smell of pipe smoke, and the one thing he had said which she had understood and remembered. It's a poor craftsman, he had told her three-year old self, who blames his tools. Perhaps he would be proud to know that, whatever else Adora had turned out to be, it was not a poor craftsman. Ignoring the tremble in Skitteka's paw she arched her back and hummed in a way that she knew pleased him.

            When he had stopped trembling she said, 'Some of the slaves heard Evasqeek talking yesterday, master. He was in the main seam hiding behind his stormvermin.'

            'Hiding, yes,' Skitteka said, finding reassurance in the description. 'And what did he say?'

            'He said that he was tired of being frightened all of the time,' Adora decided. 'He said that it was too much and that he just wanted to go back to his burrow and sire lots of whelps.'

            'He said that it was too much?' Skitteka asked, his voice as flat as a blade on a grindstone.

            'That's what the slave who heard him told me,' Adora said, and wondered if she had gone too far.

            She had.

            'No,' Skitteka said. 'No, no, no. Evasqeek wouldn't tell his stormvermin that. They would kill him'

            'That slave must have got it wrong then,' Adora said, letting the blame slide from her with a practiced ease.

            'Perhaps,' Skitteka said, grabbing a fistful of her hair and squeezing so that every root screamed out in pain. 'Or perhaps it's lying. Either way, it can't be trusted. Which one was it?'

            Most humans would have hesitated. Even those whose decency had been outweighed by their terror would have struggled to fabricate a scapegoat without missing a beat. But Adora wasn't most humans.

            'It was Jules,' she said, handing out the death sentence with an instinctive understanding of who was valuable to her and who was not.

            'Jules,' Skitteka said, savouring the name of its next victim as much as it would any other tasty morsel. 'Jules. Very well, little cat. Send Jules to me. I will sharpen his ears for him.'

            Adora pretended to share the amusement of the thing as he hissed, his murderous laughter as sibilant as an adder's.

            'But first,' he said, throwing something splattering down onto the stone of the floor. 'Eat up, my little cat. I need healthy little helpers in this mine.'

            The shapeless gobbet of flesh lay in the filth, glistening. Adora gave effusive thanks as she crawled forward to it. It was meat. That, she told herself, was all that it was. Meat. Down here you could either eat it or you could be it, but either way, meat was life. Adora gnawed off a chunk and swallowed. Then she went to find Jules.

            Skitteka didn't kill Jules outright. Skitteka never killed anybody outright. Despite his stupidity and his clumsy bulk, the thing had a surgeon's skill and the wounds he inflicted, although always lethal, were seldom immediately so.

            Adora found her scapegoat lying by the side of one of the access tunnels. He had been left there so that the other slaves could see him as they trudged down past the warped and trembling mine supports and into the cancerous glow of the main seam. His intestines had been wound out of him and tied into grotesque shapes. His limbs ended in cauterised stumps. He had been blinded. And worse.

            The slaves bowed their heads in sympathy for the ruined man. Why not? Sympathy was easy. But none of them dared to brave the guards' whips by offering him comfort. None but Adora. She sat beside Jules and cradled him. He had been the one who had taught her how to make soap down here: how to mix charcoal and fat, combining dirt in order to achieve cleanliness.

            He died in her arms. The last fading rhythms of his pulse disappeared within his wasted frame, pattering away in contrast to the strong beat that pounded within her own breast. He sobbed for his mother right until the end, but it wasn't his mother who comforted him during his last hours in this eternal night. It was Adora. When he was dead she kissed him, a final blessing, then left the cooling meat of his corpse and hurried along after the other slaves. As Skitteka's pet she had some privileges. She was left unshackled, loose and generally untouched. Even so, there were things down here with more authority than her patron, and their whips left scars.

            She hurried down the claustrophobic squeeze of the narrow tunnel to rejoin her fellow slaves. Even the shortest of them walked with a permanent stoop, the ceiling of their captors' tunnels being too low for them. Their guards had no such problem. This subterranean world had been built around their rat-like forms, and they scuttled back and forth effortlessly, the razored tips of their whips hissing towards anybody who faltered or stumbled.

            As the column entered the weird green glow of the mine proper, one of the slaves fell to his knees. There was a cacophony of shrieking voices, the busy whine of whips and then screaming. The man in front of Adora used the distraction to turn and whisper to her.

            'Was he dead?' he asked, his voice thick with an Estalian accent. He was called Xavier, and of all the men down here Adora judged him to be the strongest. Although smaller than the northerners she was used to, he had a wiry strength that even this hellish captivity hadn't been able to sap. He had a hardness in his eyes too. It suggested that, even though he was defeated, he still had enough pride to dream of revenge.

            Adora had high hopes for him. So much so that, after casting a quick glance around, she took the risk of whispering a reply.

            'Yes,' she said. 'He's dead.'

            'He's lucky.'

            'Don't be a fool,' she told him.

            The man looked at her. In the sickly green light it was impossible to make out his expression but Adora could see that it was either anger or amusement. As far as she was concerned, either would do.

            'How long have you been down-' he began, but the sentence changed into a hiss of agony as a guard sliced him with a whip.

            'No talking,' it squeaked, then chittered something unintelligible as it struck him again. The leather cut through rags and skin both, and his blood spattered onto the floor, black in the sickly light.

            Then the column was moving again. The green glow of the wyrdstone grew brighter. Adora felt her skin crawl and her teeth ache as they reached the first deposit. Tools were handed out and she stumbled forward, eyes watering as she started to hack away at the stone in search of the wyrdstone fragments entombed within.

            She studied her captors as she worked. As always happened in the presence of the wyrdstone, their demeanour had changed. They had not become calm so much as transfixed by the sickly green glow. They still watched the slaves, in as much as the slaves were revealing the accursed stuff, but mainly they watched each other. The pure black orbs of their eyes glittered with suspicion, and although their whips rested, their paws often strayed to the hilts of their poisoned blades.

            Adora could recognise greed when she saw it. That was why today, as every day, she waited to see if an opportunity would present itself.

            It did. One of the slaves hacked a lump of the wyrdstone loose, crying out in pain as it sprang away from the rock face with a sudden burst of painful light. The overseers clustered around the find, their scaly tails twitching with horrible excitement and their beady eyes blind to all else, and that was when Adora struck. In a single, fluid movement she grabbed the wyrdstone fragment she had been standing on and concealed it amongst the rags which bound her legs. She only touched it with her bare skin for a moment, but in that moment her bones ached and her muscles squirmed and she had to choke back the cry of horror which rose unbidden to her lips.

            The pain faded slowly as she carried on working. She paid it no heed. However vile the wyrdstone was, it was valuable to them and so, she reasoned, it was valuable to her.

            'He's coming? Here?' Evasqeek bared his incisors. The guards who were gathered in the chief overseer's burrow cowered at their master's agitation. Only the runner who had brought the tidings remained unmoved by his reaction.

            'Yes, master,' said the runner, revelling in malicious pleasure at the fear it had brought. 'Chief Vass will visit the mine to see that all is well. He is concerned that production is down.'

            Evasqeek lashed the ground with his tail, and his eyes rolled around in panic.

            'The seam is running out,' he whined. 'There is less and less of the stone every day. It's not me, it's the deposit.'

            Then he remembered who he was talking to. Vass was one thing, the vicious old fool, but this runner wasn't worthy of an excuse. Worthy of punishment, perhaps...

            The runner, as though seeing the vengeful turn of the chief overseer's thoughts, interrupted them.

            'My Lord Vass requests that I return with your estimate of the stone you will have when he arrives,' he said. In fact, Lord Vass had requested no such thing. It was just that the runner's whiskers were twitching with the knowledge that this chief overseer wanted a victim, and that it wasn't going to be him.

            'Tell him forty ingots,' Evasqeek decided.

            'Is that all?' The runner asked, pushing his luck.

            'Maybe more,' Evasqeek said, suddenly aware of how dangerously frightened he had begun to smell in front of his stormvermin. 'Now go. I have work to do.'

            'I know,' the runner said and, before Evasqeek's spite could overcome his caution, it turned and scuttled back out of the burrow.

            'Go and fetch Skitteka,' Evasqeek said at length. 'He is the slave master, and the slaves produce the stone. So if we aren't producing enough, it's his fault.'

            It was a reassuring thought and one that Evasqeek clung to as he worked out how best to shift the blame.

            The slaves had no idea how long their shifts lasted. There was no day down here, only an eternal night. The guards merely waited for the first of their charges to collapse before letting the rest of them return to their quarters. All but the one who had collapsed, of course. He'd be flayed alive, a miners' canary of human frailty who paid the ultimate price for everybody else's rest.

            When that was done the survivors would drag themselves back to where they were quartered, gulp down a bowl of whatever vile broth their captors provided, and then clamber down into the lightless oubliette where they were kept. There were no other exits from the dungeon apart from the hole in the roof though which the ladder descended. The dank cavern stank of human misery and human waste, and if it hadn't been for the cracks in the rock the inmates would have drowned in the latter long ago.

            Now, after gulping down a bowl of something greasy and congealed, Adora climbed down into this stinking pit. The rest of the slaves had already collapsed, allowing themselves to fall victim to terror and exhaustion. Adora felt a flicker of contempt for them as she forced herself to keep moving, keep thinking. Keep one step ahead.

            The trapdoor banged closed above her and the darkness became complete. It was a heavy leaden thing, this darkness, as though it bore every ounce of the tons of rock that lay above. The weight crushed some of the slaves, and their howling and sobbing echoed against the damp stone walls. Others raised their voices in a ragged chorus of desperate prayer, the Sigmarite chants a feeble defiance against the all conquering night.

            Adora ignored them as she ignored the soft confusion of broken bodies beneath her feet. She was too intent on the cache she had hidden in one of the crevasses that lined the walls.

            Over the past weeks she had amassed perhaps half a kilo of wyrdstone. The fragments produced a nerve shredding heat even through the rag bundle she had wrapped them in, and it was no coincidence that the ground beneath them was the only part of the cavern not tumbled with human bodies.

            When she had made sure her poisonous treasure was secure she took a deep breath and finally allowed herself to think about sleep. Not here, though. Not by the wyrdstone.

            She started picking her way back through the mass of bodies, ignoring the whimpers and cries of protest. Then from beneath her she heard one voice that was neither fearful nor hurt.

            'I'll thank you not to stand on my hand,' it said, and Adora realised she had found the Estalian.

            'Then I'll thank you to make room for a lady,' she said and, pausing only to knee somebody aside, slid down beside him.

            'Feel free to take a seat,' he said, and when Adora heard the unmistakable tone of irony in his voice, her heart leapt. Irony. It was like the scent of clean air or a glimpse of blue sky, a thing that could only come from a place of freedom.

            'My name is Adora,' she said, as though she had just handed him the keys to a kingdom.

            'And my name is Xavier Esteban de Souza,' he replied, sounding as though she actually had.

            'You haven't been down here long, have you?' she asked, and leaned into him with a total lack of self-consciousness. He was lean but not wasted, his slim frame corded with the tight muscles of a fencer, or perhaps an acrobat. She pressed against him, enjoying the warmth of his body against hers.

            'Perhaps a month,' he said, carefully not moving away. 'Perhaps more. It's difficult to keep track.'

            'Try,' Adora told him.

            'Why bother?' he asked.

            Adora didn't reply. Instead she slid her hand gently down his forearm, selected a hair, and pulled it out. He yelped with surprise as much as pain.

            'If you and I are to be friends,' she told him, 'you are never to ask that question again. Never even to think it.'

            He grunted, and she thought he understood. She hoped so. Nobody survived down here once they started to ask that question. Nobody.

            'Where are you from?' she asked him, stroking the forearm from where she had plucked the hair.

            'From Estalia,' he said simply. 'I am a swordsman, as was my father and his father before him.'

            'Are you any good?' Adora asked, and she could tell by the way he sat a little straighter that he was.

            'One of the best. When we are boys, the sons of our family train amongst pens full of the toros negros, the wild bulls from the mountains. They have horns blacker than this night and natures as fickle as any woman's.'

            'As fickle as that?' Adora asked.

            Xavier chuckled, and the sound was so alien in the darkness that a silence descended around them.

            'Yes,' he said, 'as fickle as that. You can never tell when they will turn on you or your opponent. It gives those of us who survive eyes in the back of our heads.'

            'If you have eyes in the back of your head,' Adora teased him, 'then how were you caught?'

            'Sorcery,' Xavier replied simply. 'I was a guard on a caravan. One night there was an alarm and suddenly we were all choking. After that, I don't remember much. We were all split up, and then there were endless passages. Endless days.'

            'There is no such thing as endless passages,' Adora told him with the cast iron assurance of a mother telling her child that monsters don't exist.

            Xavier just shrugged.

            'You're right of course,' he shook himself. 'But endless or not I will escape through them. I just haven't found a way yet.'

            'Maybe I can help with that,' Adora said. 'In the meantime let us remember why we should bother.'

            She turned her head towards his and kissed him, and amongst the squalor, the madness and the fear, they reminded each other that it was worth staying alive.

            Uncountable hours later the trap door opened and the ladder descended into the pit. In the sudden flare of torchlight, Adora watched the struggling mass of slaves as they fought to climb it. They pushed and elbowed each other aside, their tiredness forgotten as they raised their voices and clenched their fists.

            One man struck another with a crack of knuckles against bone. Another was pulled down and trampled by the men behind him. With a sudden shriek another gave in to panic and hurled himself towards the ladder, trying to swim through his fellows. He didn't get far.

            'Why do they rush back to their labours?' Xavier asked Adora who stood up beside him. 'Are they mad?'

            'No, just stupid,' she said. 'The overseers always beat the last couple of people to come out.'

            'Maybe we should hurry too, then,' Xavier said, but Adora shook her head.

            Even in this gloom he could see the way the light played in her hair, its lustre untarnished. She was beautiful, he decided. The only beautiful thing left in the world.

            'Save your strength,' she said. 'There are always a few left stunned by the melee.'

            Xavier frowned. 'What if there aren't?'

            'Then we'll stun a couple,' Adora said and smiled, her teeth as white as a shark's in an ocean full of seals.

            Xavier grunted and decided that she was joking. Soon the crowd cleared and she led him forward, pushing through the weaker of the slaves who remained below. If some of them flinched when they saw who was pushing them, Xavier didn't notice, or if he noticed, then he didn't think about it.

            He let her climb the ladder first, admiring her form as she did so. Then he followed her up into the waiting torchlight. After the lightless hours spent in the pit he found that he was squinting, and he rubbed his watering eyes as the iron shackles which bound him to the chain gang were snapped around his ankle. When he looked up his breath caught in his throat.

            Adora was not locked into the chain with the rest of them. Instead she was cowering beneath the touch of a monster. Like all of its verminous kind the thing had chisel teeth and a scaly lash of a tail. It had the beady black eyes too, glittering with malevolence and cunning, and an obscenely naked wrinkle of a snout. Unlike its fellows it was huge. Even with its stoop it was as tall as a man, and even wider across the shoulders.

            But what choked Xavier with horror was not the thing's bulk but the way it was touching Adora, dragging its filthy claws through her hair with some grotesque parody of affection.

            Before he knew what he was doing he was on the balls of his feet, weight balanced and shoulders loose. Had it not been for the shackle on his ankle he would have attacked, weapon or not, and that would have been the end of him. As it was, the dead weight of the steel and the deader weight of the slaves around him gave him pause, and in that moment Adora looked at him.

            She winked, and for the first time he realised how blue her eyes were. As blue as the pure seas and clear skies that awaited them above. Then she tilted her head, gesturing him to leave her. It was a barely perceptible sign but he followed it as thoughtlessly as a bull followed the flicker of a red cape.

            They would survive, he knew that now. They would survive together.

            He let himself be led away with the slaves and didn't even look back as he heard the soothing sweetness of Adora's voice whispering in the distance.

            And Adora needed to be soothing. Once his underlings had scurried off, their whips dancing gleefully across the skin of their victims, Skitteka turned and lumbered off to the sanctuary of his burrow. It was only when safely ensconced behind the heavy iron doors that he turned to Adora and unburdened himself.

            'Vass is coming,' he said simply. As he said the name his tail trembled and even Adora could smell the change in his odour. She said nothing. She didn't need to. Skitteka obviously needed to speak, and of all the creatures down here Adora was the only one it could trust.

            'Evasqeek, Evasqeek, Evasqeek,' the thing gibbered, its voice a high pitched whine. 'He will betray me, the vile thing. He will use me to avoid paying for his own failings and make them mine instead. When Vass comes, Evasqeek will blame me for the slackening flow of the stone, the thrice-accursed liar.'

            Skitteka clawed at her as he spoke, but she endured his painful caresses as uncomplainingly as ever. In truth she barely felt them, for as her verminous master spoke she saw the first cracks appearing in her confinement.

            'Oh, Vass,' Skitteka moaned, his voice a terrified combination of horror and admiration. 'In Qaask he chained all the slave handlers together and let the slaves work them. None of them survived their own whips. Then there was Tsatsabad where they say he simply sealed the entire mine and flooded it with poisoned wind. Imagine how they must have scrabbled and fought as their lungs melted.'

            Skitteka paused and licked the yellowed blades of his incisors with a long pink tongue.

            'And in Isquvar he had the overseer sealed into a cauldron and then rendered down into slave gruel. They say he added one scrap of coal to the fire at a time so that it took an entire day for his victim to stop screaming. Mind you, he had been caught stealing warpstone.'

            The cracks which Adora had seen appearing at her confinement blossomed into real possibilities. They were tenuous possibilities to be sure, but they were real enough to set the carefully nurtured embers of her hope ablaze. As Skitteka continued to speak her eyes burned blue in the darkness.

            'Curse Evasqeek,' Skitteka continued, turning from admiration of Vass to shrill self-pity. 'He will give me to Vass and something horrible will happen.'

            Adora felt a flash of contempt, and wondered how this weakling had become the master of the slaves. She supposed it was because of his muscle. It certainly couldn't have been his courage.

            'My lord,' she said, her face lowered. 'If Evasqeek does betray you, I will be finished. Without you I am nothing.'

            Skitteka struck her. It took her by complete surprise, and she was sent tumbling across the stone floor of the burrow. There was no pain, not yet, but there was numbness down one side of her body and a warm trickle of blood had already begun to flow.

            'Ungrateful creature!' Skitteka shrieked as she staggered back to her feet. It had drawn its dagger, and although the metal was dull, the liquid that coated it glowed with a toxic intensity. 'How can you be so selfish?'

            It lurched towards her, its monstrous bulk blotting out the light from the lantern, and Adora knew that in these nightmare depths, death was finally upon her. She didn't waste time worrying about it.

            'Forgive me, my lord. I only meant that I would like your permission to kill Evasqeek.'

            Skitteka stopped and staggered backwards as though he had been shot by a jezzail.

            'Kill him?' he asked, a new hope in his voice. 'But how can a little cat like you kill Evasqeek?'

            Adora looked at him, and for the first time since she had met the creature she made no effort to compose her features. No pretended humility marred the porcelain hardness of her features; no false fear widened her predatory gaze or trembled on the hungry perfection of her lips. No simulated respect bowed the straight perfection of her stance, nor did it smooth the arrogant composure with which she carried herself.

            As she stood before him unmasked, Skitteka took another step back, and another. He felt as though he had bitten down into soft flesh to find a razor blade hidden within. Adora, seeing his beady eyes swivel uncertainly, lowered her head demurely.

            'I will do it because I must. Without you I am nothing, my lord. Get me within striking distance of Evasqeek when Vass arrives and I will do for him.'

            Skitteka hesitated, paralysed by hope. Then he sheathed his dagger, the blade hissing like a serpent as it disappeared, and slumped back into his chair.

            'Maybe,' he murmured, scrabbling in his filthy robes for something. 'Maybe you will.'

            The first hint the slaves got of the impending visit was the sudden cessation of work. In the days preceding their lord's arrival Vass's servants insisted on checking every inch of the mine for traps, and while they did so the slaves were locked into their oubliette.

            At first they wallowed in their idleness, savouring every moment of it as a starving man will savour every mouthful of a feast. But as time dragged on their permanent exhaustion was replaced by another torture. Forgotten in the blinding darkness, starvation started to take its toll.

            It wasn't long before rumours of cannibalism began to circulate.

            'I think it's time to escape,' Xavier said, whispering into Adora's ear so that they wouldn't be overheard. 'What do you think?'

            Adora enjoyed the warmth of his breath on her neck. She had long since learned to use such scraps of pleasure to distract her from... well, from everything. She leaned closer to him before she replied.

            'I think we should be patient,' she said and tried not to sound patronising. 'Even if you could climb up to the trap door, and even if you could get it open, what do you think would be waiting for you there?'

            'Perhaps nothing. Perhaps we have been abandoned.'

            'Do you really think so?' Adora asked.

            'Well then, the vermin,' Xavier said carelessly. 'I'll have to kill them to get out eventually anyway.'

            Adora smiled and sighed contentedly. Men were all fools, of course, so that was alright. What was important was that she had finally found one with the courage to be a leader. Like all shepherds she knew the value of a good sheep dog and she had truly found one in this tough little Estalian.

            'It might be better to fight them when they aren't standing on top of a hole waiting for you,' she said, and felt him pull away.

            'I do not appreciate being mocked,' he said, and Adora smiled again. Pride. Was there a better way to handle a man? Well, maybe one. She reached for him, but she was interrupted by the clang of metal and a shaft of light cutting down into the darkness. After the blind days she had spent down here the light seemed as solid as a stream of molten iron, and her eyes ached as she looked towards it.

            When her tears cleared she could see the mass of slaves that huddled around her, hope and terror warring on their upturned faces. When one of the guards appeared in the trap door opening they froze like a field full of mice beneath the shadow of a hawk.

            'Skitteka wants his pet,' the creature shrilled.

            Adora got to her feet and walked towards the opening. The other slaves pulled away from her, all but Xavier. As she waited for the ladder to tumble down he appeared beside her, and his hand brushed against hers.

            'I'm coming with you,' he said.

            'You can't,' Adora told him, surprise lifting the perfect arcs of her eyebrows. 'You haven't been summoned.'

            'They won't care,' Xavier said with a fatalistic confidence. 'And I need to see more of this place. Need to start finding weaknesses.'

            'No,' Adora shook her head. 'No, it's not worth the risk.'

            'I'm coming,' Xavier insisted.

            'Don't come,' Adora said. 'It's better if - '

            'Quick-quick!' the creature above shrieked, and Adora realised that the ladder had reached the ground while they had been arguing.

            'Stay here,' she said, and started up it. When she reached the top she was not surprised to see Xavier clamber up behind her. She was sure that the verminous guards who awaited them would kick him back down, but they seemed hardly to notice.

            It slowly dawned on Adora just how distracted they were. Their whiskers twitched at every draft of air and the scaly lengths of their tails coiled and uncoiled nervously. Once, there was a boom of some distant falling rock, and all the guards sprang into the air, their beady black eyes rolling in terror.

            When they finally arrived at the entrance to Skitteka's personal burrow they hung back, chittering nervously.

            'Go on!' the leader said, pushing Adora towards the iron door. She went, trying not to let her guards' terror infect her. Xavier followed closely and, as soon as she had gone through the iron door, she closed it behind her, pushing him against it.

            'Wait here,' she hissed. 'Any further and we'll both be killed.'

            To her relief he nodded, and she paused to give him the briefest of kisses before composing herself and padding down the corridor into Skitteka's chambers. As soon as she saw him she knew why his underlings had been so terrified. He had been gnawing on wyrdstone.

            Adora felt something like despair as she looked at her chosen master. He wasn't aware of her or of anything else. His eyes were rolled so far back in his skull that she could see the whites, and pink foam bubbled down from his mouth.

            She glanced down and saw the remains of one of Skitteka's underlings. Its carcass was torn and broken, and as she crept a little closer she could see that it had been partially eaten.

            That was no problem. What would be a problem would be if the wyrdstone had brought on more than a fit of madness. She knew what it could do, had seen the half-glimpsed horrors that were occasionally driven screaming from the mine. The wyrdstone didn't just kill, it transformed.

            She squinted into the gloom as she padded silently around Skitteka's paralytic form. As far as she could tell the body which sweated and wheezed beneath its filthy pelt was the same grotesque bulk as always.

            'Is he dead?'

            Adora spun around and glared at Xavier. After a quick glance back at Skitteka she paced angrily towards him.

            'I told you to wait,' she hissed, but he didn't respond to her fury. Instead he just pushed past her.

            At first she thought that he was making for the half-eaten corpse that lay crumpled on the floor but he hurried past it and into the shadows on the far side of the chamber. When he stood up she saw the glitter of a sword in his hand. He weighed it, looked at Skitteka and smiled.

            'Vengeance comes to those who wait,' he said softly, and Adora saw that he was going to kill Skitteka. Skitteka the vicious. Skitteka the coward. Skitteka, the weak link upon which all of her plans for escape hung.

            'No,' she said, starting forward to intercept him. 'No, leave him. We need him, can't you see that? We need him!'

            But Xavier wasn't listening to her. His eyes were ablaze with a devouring hatred, and he was holding the blade with professional ease.

            She knew that she wasn't strong enough to stop him. Knew that no words could quench the rage she saw in his eyes. Knew that even if she called for the vermin none of them would arrive in time to help.

            So she reached up to her neck, untied the ragged shift and let it fall to the floor.

            Xavier stopped, his mouth falling open. She looked like something from another world.

            Of course she was scrawny. Scrawny enough that he could count her ribs. But she was still whole, her breasts and hips and thighs still curvy enough to catch the same torchlight which glowed within the golden mane of her hair. She was also incredibly, unbelievably, impossibly untarnished. No trace of disease marred the smooth silken perfection of her skin. Neither did any dirt.

            Who was clean down here, he wondered? How was it possible?

            But more than that, much more, was her fragility. Only things that haven't been broken yet can be fragile and he could see that Adora, alone amongst all of the slaves, hadn't been broken.

            He tried to hold on to his outrage but then she was running one hand along the clenched line of his jaw and standing so close that he could smell soap. Soap!

            'I don't understand,' he said. They were his last words. A sudden explosion of pain blossomed in his belly, and then thrust upwards into his liver.

            'I'm sorry,' said Adora, and twisted the blade she had taken from him. If she had punctured his heart first it would have been easier, or at least cleaner. As it was his heart carried on beating as he died, pumping great gouts of blood from his desecrated body. It spattered on to her chilled skin with hideous warmth.

            'I'm sorry.'

            The look of confusion stayed on his face, pinned there by death, and he collapsed onto the floor next to the verminous corpse of Skitteka's half eaten victim. Adora knelt down, twisted out the dagger, and slipped it into the stillness of his jugular just to make sure.

            'I'm sorry,' she said, her face expressionless. Then she tore off the ragged remains of his shirt to wipe herself clean of his blood, and clean her dagger before slipping back into her clothes. Then, sitting on the cold stone floor, she put her head in her hands, and wept.

            An hour later Skitteka regained consciousness. By then she was as composed as ever.

            Vass had been born last into a litter of thirteen. He had also been born the runt. Not many of his species could have survived such twin disadvantages but Vass did. He not only survived but thrived, doing so by the simple expedient of devouring his siblings. He started with the weakest, losing three of his milk teeth in the process, and finished with the strongest. That had been just as soon as he had learned to lift a rock above its sleeping head.

            This was an exceptional beginning even for one of his species, and his dam was so distressed that she died soon after the last of her other offspring. It was not a sacrifice Vass had let go to waste. The rest of his life had been a continuation of that promising start. He joined his clan's warriors almost as soon as he was out of the burrow, and soon set about translating the fratricidal excesses of his whelphood into political progress.

            Now, at the ripe old age of twelve, Vass had developed a reputation for savagery that made him the envy of his kin. It had preceded him into this miserable mine, a dread that was almost a physical thing. He could see it now in the crouching forms and twisting tails of the chiefs and leaders who abased themselves before him, grovelling in the dirt of what had once been their domain but which was now so effortlessly his.

            He had gathered them in the audience chamber. His personal guards stood around the walls, magnificent in their arrogance and cruelty. They would satiate their bloodlust before the day was out, and anticipation of the joys to come set their eyes agleam in the darkness. Their presence did little to help Evasqeek's nerves.

           Instead of executing the chief overseer immediately for his treacherous inefficiency, Vass had decided to let him talk first. Not that it was doing him any good.

            'It was the cave-in, your worship.' Evasqeek chittered. He was grovelling so abjectly on the floor that the blades of his incisors tapped intermittently on the rock.

            'The cave-in?' Vass asked, his beady eyes as hard as glass.

            'Yes,' Evasqeek pleaded, and squeezed his paws together so tightly that he might have been holding a throat. 'Yes, the cave-in. We lost fifty slaves and a score of the best handlers.'

            Vass shifted comfortably on the raised litter that dominated the room. As always on these occasions he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

            'When was this cave-in?' he asked ingenuously, and was gratified to smell a fresh wave of terror emanating from his victim.

            'A month ago, my liege,' the mine supervisor admitted and, realising that the excuse had been a mistake, suddenly changed tack. 'But the real problem is the indolence and treachery of slave master Skitteka. He is too soft on the slaves. He doesn't look after them either. They keep dying from the lightest of wounds.'

            'I see,' Vass said. His spies and informers had already determined that the real reason for Evasqeek's failure was that his mine was almost exhausted. He would still need to make an example of somebody, of course, but it occurred to him that it wouldn't necessarily have to be Evasqeek himself.

            'Yes, yes, yes,' Evasqeek jabbered. 'It's Skitteka's fault. He's lazy, too.'

            'Then perhaps I should speak with this Skitteka,' Vass decided. He heard a whimper from amongst the assembled throng and saw an exceptionally bulky figure trying to press itself into the floor.

            'You're Skitteka I suppose?' Vass asked. But before the skaven could reply a voice rang out. A human voice.

            All eyes turned to the slave who stood at the entrance of the audience chamber. Ordinarily the guards would have lashed the flesh from her bones for such an intrusion, but now they were too busy cowering themselves. The hungry eyes of Vass's guard had transformed them from predators into prey.

            And so Adora padded unbidden into the audience chamber. Evasqeek watched her dumbly and felt vaguely grateful that at least attention had been turned away from him.

            His relief was to be short lived.

            'My Lord Evasqeek,' the slave said, her tone perfectly pitched into the place where hope and terror meet. 'We are sorry the tribute is late. Please forgive us. It was because we were locked up.'

            So saying she fell to the floor besides Evasqeek, pressed her head down even lower than his, and slid a ragged bundle across to him. He reached out for it unthinkingly, and as the rags loosened he was bathed in the hypnotic green glow of wyrdstone.

            It pulsed inches away from his snout, and he seemed to feel his blood boil and fizz. Desire and revulsion tore through his thoughts, and he hardly heard Vass when he spoke.

            'I thought that wyrdstone was supposed to be handed directly to the clan's treasurer,' Vass said.

            Evasqeek felt blood trickling from his snout. He licked his teeth and, eyes still on the pulsing light of the stone, said: 'What?'

            'Why are the slaves delivering the stone directly to you?' Vass asked, his tone mild. It seemed that Evasqeek would provide him with his example after all. And why not? He would do as well as anyone. He suddenly had an idea of what that example would be, too.

            'I don't know,' Evasqeek said vaguely, and managed to tear his eyes away from the fragments of stone. He looked up at Adora, and although he didn't recognise her, he did recognise Skitteka's marking on her.

            'Wait,' he said, understanding dawning. 'Wait, this is a trick. Skitteka-'

            But at Vass's signal the guards were already closing in. Evasqeek saw his doom waiting in the manacles they carried, and panic burst inside him. With a scream he launched himself towards the exit, clawing through his fellows as he tried to escape, but he had left it far, far too late. Within seconds he had been beaten down and chained up, transformed from the mine's master to its most miserable captive.

            'It seems you have developed a taste for the stone,' Vass said, prowling towards him. 'But fear not. I have a mind to be merciful. I am going to feed you of much of it as you can take. And then,' he bent down to whisper into his captive's ear, 'I'm going to feed you some more.'

            Evasqeek's last coherent thought as they pinned him to the floor was one of surprise. Who would have thought that the fat fool Skitteka had the wit to set him up like this? How could he have maintained such a facade of gluttonous incompetence whilst setting these wheels in motion?

            He saw Vass stalking towards him, the bundle of stone held in his trembling paw. As soon as he realised what was going to happen he started shrieking, froth flecking his snout as he spasmed and writhed. The guards waited for their chance then slipped ligatures around his lower and upper jaws, pulling them open to reveal the thrashing pink of the tongue within.

            'That's right,' Vass said softly. 'Open wide.'

            And with that he started to feed Evasqeek. He pressed the stone down his throat one cancerous piece at a time. At first his victim hissed and rolled his eyes in terror. Then he started to shrill and his eyes bulged with a crazed joy. Eventually he started to change.

            Fur sloughed away. Limbs withered. A second tail grew from the melting knots of his spine, a paw blossoming from the end of it. Eyes blinked open across his disintegrating form and the claws on his feet lengthened into talons.

            Vass's guard worked to keep pace with the transformation. They tightened some chains, loosened others. The tail was bound with leather ligatures and the eyes blinded as soon as they opened. They worked fast, concentrating on the knots and chains and ligatures that bound the monster's form with the desperate skill of sailors adjust the rigging of a storm-tossed ship.

            Even after Vass ran out of stone the transformation continued. It only slowed after the thing that had been Evasqeek was no longer recognisable. It bubbled and hissed and mewled within the mesh of its confinement, its image reflected in a hundred pairs of horrified eyes.

            Alone in the chamber Adora regarded the horror before her with equanimity. Her eyes were as calm as a deep blue sea on a still summer's day, and a smile played around the perfect curve of her lips. There was a faint blush in the cream of her complexion too, just as much as there might be had she just returned from a vigorous horse ride on a warm afternoon.

            Then she shook herself and, whilst her captors still gazed hypnotised at the horror that had once been their master, she slipped away as silently as a cat in twilight.

            'You bring me much luck, little cat,' Skitteka mused and pawed idly at his pet. Although it had only been a few weeks since Vass had appointed him as mine overseer, he had already gained over twenty pounds in weight. Even the pads on his paws had fattened, and he had taken to slapping Adora to hear the sound echo in the great audience chamber.

            His audience chamber.

            'You are truly the only one deserving of this honour, lord,' Adora told him, and in a way it was true. With Evasqeek out of the way Skitteka was the only one with a vicious enough reputation to rule his subordinates. Since he had taken over, things had certainly run smoothly.

            That was something that Adora knew that she had to change. So she said:

            'My lord Skitteka, can I ask you a question?'

            Skitteka slapped her playfully, the impact of his paw numbing her back. He was in a high good humour today.

            'Of course you can,' he hissed. 'As long as it isn't a boring one.'

            'Thank you, lord,' Adora said. 'I just wondered why you keep the thing that used to be Evasqeek locked in a cell?'

            Skitteka hesitated and Adora waited for another blow, harder this time. Instead Skitteka answered her.

            'Vass and I decided to keep him,' he said, by which he meant that Vass had told him what to do while he had grovelled miserably before him. 'It's a reminder of what happens to traitors and thieves.'

            Skitteka took a pawful of her hair and twisted it for reassurance. Adora ignored the pain and risked another question.

            'Very wise of you, my lord,' she said. 'But what does the thing eat?'

            'Anything,' Skitteka said with a shiver. 'Anything at all. And it's always hungry. But enough about that. Tell me what you have learned in the past few days.

            'Three of the slaves are planning to break through their chains and escape,' she said, not because it was true but because it wasn't. The three she had in mind spent every night howling and sobbing and wailing with a misery close to madness. Adora knew that unless she removed them quickly, their despair would weaken others who might otherwise prove useful.

            'Give their names to the guards when you get back,' Skitteka said.

            'Yes, lord,' Adora said. 'There's also a rumour that an army of ghosts are gathering in some of the worked out tunnels.'

            Skitteka hissed and twisted at her hair.

            'Ghosts? What makes them say that?'

            'Some of them have heard things. Seen things. It's probably nonsense, my lord, but that's what they say.'

            Skitteka shifted, his whiskers twitching in thought. Adora pretended not to watch. She had almost invented something a bit more tangible for Skitteka to send his guards chasing after. Orcs perhaps, or some other monsters. But as always, it seemed, she had judged Skitteka's gnawing anxieties correctly.

            'Something to investigate,' he mused, beady eyes darting around the empty spaces of the chamber. 'What else?'

            'Nothing definite...' Adora began, then trailed off.

            Skitteka, catching something in her tone, forgot about ghosts and fixed his attention on her.

            'Tell me,' he said, and twisted one of her ears. Pain screamed as the flesh came close to tearing. Adora ignored the white-hot agony and spoke with a perfectly contrived hesitancy.

            'The guard Tso-tso,' she began. 'Whenever I am near him, he and his friends stop talking. It is almost as though they are suspicious of me.'

            Skitteka released her ear and chittered with agitation. Tso-tso! He should have known that he was a traitor. He was capable and respected by the others. He no doubt had his own designs on Skitteka's position. Well, he would see where those would get him.

            'Very good,' he said, and absent-mindedly tossed a gobbet of meat onto the floor in front of Adora.

            'Thank you, my lord,' she said and scuttled over to claim it. She ignored the rotten iron taste of the raw flesh just as studiously as she ignored the provenance of it. Her gag reflex almost betrayed her as the first torn-off morsel slithered down her gullet, but she massaged her oesophagus and thought about how close she was. How terrifyingly close.

            'I heard it took Tso-tso over three days to die,' one of the guards said to the other.

            'Three days, yes,' his companion replied.

            Their conversation died. Their tails writhed. Their nostrils wrinkled. Something banged against the iron-bound door behind them and they both leapt into the air. When they landed they turned towards the cell they were guarding. The iron held firm, and the heavy beams that held it shut remained intact. But was that a new crack in the timber?

            'Our shift must be over by now,' one of the guards chittered. 'Must be, must be.'

            'It's that cowardly scrunt Kai,' the other agreed, fear turning to hatred within the black orbs of his eyes. 'He's always late.'

            Something heavy slid against the door. It seemed to bulge beneath the guards' terrified gaze, yet it still held firm. For now at least.

            'Look,' said one. 'Why don't I go and get our relief? You can stay here while I'm gone.'

            His companion didn't deign to reply. He merely hissed with annoyance. Their concentration was focussed so intently on the door that they didn't hear the footsteps padding up behind them.

            'Permission to speak, my lords,' a voice said. The guards shrieked as they spun around. When they saw that it was a slave their terror blossomed into rage, and they scrabbled for their whips.

            'I have a message from Lord Skitteka,' Adora said. 'It is very urgent.'

            'Speak then,' one said, paw still closed around the hilt of his whip. 'Speak, speak.'

            'My lord Skitteka requests that you go to his audience chamber immediately.'

            'What for?' the two guards said in perfect unison, their voices sharp with suspicion.

            'He didn't tell me,' said Adora.

            The guards exchanged a troubled glance.

            'But who will guard-'

            This time the sound that came from the cell was not an impact but a series of squelches, as though something was being dismembered. Something big.

            'He wants both of us?' one of the guards asked hopefully.

            'Yes, lord,' Adora said. 'And I am to wait here until you get back.'

            The guards looked at her. If the thing escaped she wouldn't be anything more than a morsel for it. But so what? That was gloriously, wonderfully, tail-liftingly no longer their problem.

            The two guards took a final look at the door then skittered off. Adora waited until they had disappeared around the corner before she turned to the door.

            Three thick wooden beams had been slotted into holes cut into the stone on either side of the door. A lump of ancient iron and battered timber, it rested on crude iron hinges each as big as Adora's head. The hinges were rusty and the door was heavy, but it opened outwards so that was alright. The thing within would have no problem opening it. No problem at all.

            As she tested the weight of the first of the beams that held the door closed, she heard something slither behind it. It would be waiting for her when she freed it, of that she was sure. Waiting hungrily.

            'Good,' she told herself.

            Adora wedged her shoulder beneath the beam and lifted it, freeing one end from the stone slot in which it had rested. Then she dropped it and sprang away as it thudded onto the floor. The noise echoed down the passageway. When the echoes had gone there was silence on the other side of the door.

            Ignoring the twist in her stomach Adora removed the second beam, letting it tumble to the floor next to the first. When she stooped to remove the third an almost paralysing sense of reluctance came over her. She had seen the creation of the thing that had been Evasqeek, and beside it all the horrors down here paled into insignificance. There was wrongness to it, a terrible, life-hating wrongness.

            'Good,' she repeated, lifting her chin and gazing defiantly into space. 'Then it will serve my purpose.'

            Without giving herself any more time to think she wrestled the final bar free and stepped back from the door. It was as well that she did. No sooner had the last bar been lifted than the horror within hurled forward. Iron and wood shattered as it impacted on the stone wall and the thing which had been Evasqeek emerged.

            Adora tried to scream, but her throat had locked tight. Her knees had locked tight too, and even though instinct screamed at her to run, run, rundamn it, she remained frozen as the thing slithered and lurched towards her.

            It had grown during the dark weeks of its captivity. Now it was three times the size of the creature it had once been, and a confusion of pseudopods and limbs grasped greedily at the world about it. The eyes that dotted its form like so many bullet holes swivelled towards Adora and then she was screaming, and she was running, and she had never been so terrified in her life.

            The thing chased her and although that was what she had wanted all along she wasn't happy about that. Not any more, no, not one little bit. For the first time she understood how all of those that had died around her had been able to give up on life.

            But she was still Adora. Even as panic gripped her she made sure that the thing remained behind her as she followed the route she had decided upon. This was her one chance to escape, her only chance. And, she decided, she would take it just as surely as a dropped cat will land on its feet.

            The guards had just closed the hatch on the last of the slaves when Adora burst in on them. Although they were used to having Skitteka's pet sidling around they had never seen her like this, fleeing and terrified and suddenly dangerous looking.

            'In the hole with you,' one of them said and pointed to the trap door that led down into the oubliette. He went to lift it and Adora had a terrible vision of what would happen to the trapped mass of humanity below if the thing behind her got down amongst them.

            'Run,' she told him and hit him straight armed. He tumbled backwards, shrilling in outrage as he drew his weapon, but then the thing which had been pursuing Adora was upon them.

            Their squeals echoed after her as she ran, adrenaline burning within her. After a while she slowed down and eventually forced herself to stop. The sound of the struggle behind her had already died away, and she had no doubt as to who had won. She rubbed the sweat from her face, ran her fingers through the slick of her hair, then circled back around to the oubliette.

            The thing had already gone, searching for new victims. The remains of those it had left behind lay scattered around the chamber, torn and dismembered. Adora rolled a head away from the trap door, lifted it, and pushed down the ladder. A ring of terrified faces looked up at her, squinting in the light she had let into their darkness. She looked down upon them and smiled, the radiant expression framed by the golden halo of her hair.

            'Glorious news,' she told them. 'Today the gods have given you the chance to take your vengeance.'

            With that she threw the rat-featured head of the guard down in amongst them. They looked from Adora to the head and then back again. And then with a collective cry that sounded more like the roar of a wounded beast than anything human they swarmed up the ladder, made fearless by the miracle they had witnessed.

            Had Skitteka led the battle against the thing which had been Evasqeek, it might have gone better. Without the confusion it might have been lured into a place where it could have been attacked from all sides at once, or where it could have been pushed down a mineshaft or crushed beneath falling stone.

            But Skitteka hadn't led the battle against the horror. Instead he had driven his underlings towards it, hiding behind their desperate savagery until they had finally overwhelmed it. Their victory had come at a terrible cost. The remains of a score of guards had been smeared throughout the mine, and dozens of survivors lay shattered and broken amongst them.

            Even then, had Skitteka led the battle against the slaves he might still have saved the mine. The humans were desperate but compared to the guards they were slow and clumsy, and their makeshift weapons were no match for the razored perfection of the guards' own poisoned blades.

            But Skitteka hadn't led the battle against the slaves. Instead he had locked himself into his burrow, sweating and stinking and waiting for others to save him.

            They hadn't.

            And now he sat, terrified and alone. Although the mine still rang with the sounds of battle, he ignored them. Instead he had withdrawn into the paralysing cocoon of his own cowardice. He was only shaken from it when, heralded by the squeal of a guard who had chosen to skulk rather than flee, one of the slaves slipped into the room.

            Skitteka hissed and scrabbled for the handle of his blade, but then the slave stepped into the pool of light and he recognised the blonde of her hair and the meek expression on her face.

            'My lord,' Adora said, padding forwards. 'Thank the gods you are still alive. Can I wait with you until the fighting is over?'

            Skitteka's fur bristled, and suspicion wrinkled his snout.

            'Why aren't you with the other slaves, little cat?' he said, gesturing towards her with his sword. The murderous sliver of steel gleamed with the venom which coated it.

            'They are mad, my lord,' Adora said as she closed the distance between them. 'They think that I am a traitor because of my loyalty to you.'

            Skitteka started to speak, then jumped as the door crashed open behind her. The men who charged into the chamber were as filthy and starved as all the humans, but there was a terrifying lack of fear about them. Compared to that, their lack of shackles seemed almost secondary.

            'Save me, lord!' Adora cried and rushed towards Skitteka, who had no intention of saving anybody but himself. He leapt out of his chair and turned to flee to another exit.

            But Adora was even quicker than his panic.

            As he turned his back on her she lunged forwards, slicing through first one of his hamstrings and then the other. He collapsed with a squeal and Adora reversed her grip. She punched the steel between his vertebrae with the thoughtless accuracy of a seamstress pushing thread through the eye of a needle.

            Skitteka shrieked and spasmed on the cold floor. He tried to make his crippled body work. He failed.

            'Stand back,' Adora barked at the men who were closing in on their crippled tormentor. They paused uncertainly, their picks and shovels raised for the killing blow. Adora turned on them, and when they saw the rage on her face they retreated.

            'Go and finish off the others,' she told them as she closed in on Skitteka. 'This one is mine.'

            His spine severed, he was thrashing his limbs as uselessly as a cockroach Adora had once seen nailed to the wall of an inn. She had been a serving girl at the time, and although she didn't know who had visited the cruelty upon the creature, she had never forgotten it. Between her duties she had watched it dying for almost a week, its struggles getting weaker and weaker. Eventually, when it could manage no more than the occasional twitch, its fellows had returned to devour it.

            Unfortunately she didn't have the time to organise a similar fate for Skitteka.

            Never mind. She would make do with what time she had.

            'See this?' she told him, holding up the bloodied dagger. He rolled his eyes and hissed an entreaty.

            'Please help me,' he said. 'I will give you clothes, lots of clothes. And meat! As much meat as you want.'

            Adora felt her control tearing.

            'What I want,' she said softly, 'is for you not to touch me anymore. Instead,' she lifted the dagger, 'I'm going to touch you.'

            So she did.

            It took a long, long time. When she had finished and the last of his screams had bled out she turned to find that some of the men had stayed to watch her. Their open mouths and wide eyes made them look like startled cattle.

            'Go,' she said, and tried to ignore the horror on their faces as they fled from her.

           Sunlight played upon the rippling surface of the stream. A breeze whispered soothingly through the branches of the trees. There was the smell of jasmine and fresh sap and something that might have been a distant ocean. Even the remains of the fire smelled clean, fresh ash and burned fish bones. Adora enjoyed the fragrances of freedom as she sat in the shade and waited for her rags to dry. She had washed them as thoroughly as she had washed herself and now she was working on her nails, cleaning beneath them with a gnawed twig.

            She had left the other survivors as soon as they had emerged from the mine. They were too wild and starving to be of much further use, so she had abandoned them. That had been two days ago, and she was beginning to wonder if it had been a mistake. She had no idea where she was, and there might be anything in this forest.

            She was so lost in thought that she didn't hear the hoof beats until they were almost upon her. With a startled glance upwards she sprang to her feet and hurriedly pulled her damp slip over her nakedness. A moment later, an apparition of coloured silk and burnished steel emerged from the forest. It rode a towering warhorse and carried a lance that was twice as long as she was tall. Adora padded towards the knight.

            'Excuse me, kind sir,' she said bowing her head so that her hair tumbled forward from her shoulders. 'I wonder if you might help me?'

            The knight stopped and lifted his visor. His dark features were hard with arrogance but as he took a closer look at Adora the expression turned into something else.

            'I would be honoured to, my lady,' he said and bowed towards her. 'But first we should leave this place. The enemy are not far behind. Would you ride with me?'

            'I would be honoured, my lord,' Adora said as he swung her up into the saddle behind him and carried her, sweet and smooth and lethal, back into the world of men.