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Even as Samlor's heels hit the floor on his second stride, hands and sword blades wrenched the bronze latch into fragments. A file of Beysib troopers with lamps and swords plunged into the tu
Samlor's plan had been based on the assumption that his sudden assault would startle the gathering of fisher-folk and give him the thirty seconds or so that he needed to block his escape route. This security troop was as well-trained as any force the Cirdonian had encountered, and they were already primed to rip open hiding places. Presumably Tudhaliya thought he was after fugitives from the ceremony, but that mattered as little to him as it did to Samlor.
The Cirdonian smashed open the cask and kicked it over. The naphtha gushed across the stone, darkening it, and began to flow sluggishly back in the direction Samlor was fleeing. Samlor dared not ignite the fluid until he was clear of it. He took a stride and another stride, ignoring Star's wailing as her shoulder brushed the tu
Then the second Beysib trooper stumbled over the cask and banged his own lamp down into the naphtha. The tu
The Beysib noble pitched forward. Samlor ran for the boat, clutching the child now in both arms. The capering fire threw their shadows down the tu
Samlor set Star in the stern of the punt and began shoving the vessel back towards the water. The sea had retreated since he dragged the punt out of it. While Samlor thrust at the boat, he glanced back over his shoulder. The blazing petroleum was creeping down the slope of the tu
The Cirdonian still had a push dagger sheathed on his left wrist, but it was as useless against this opponent as the knives he had left in bodies cooling on the temple floor. Samlor snatched up the punt pole, sliding it forward in his grip. As Tudhaliya feinted with his left sword, Samlor thrust the pole into the centre of the Beysib's chest. With enough room to manoeuvre, Tudhaliya would have avoided the clumsy attack. Instead, his sluggish reflexes bounced him against the tu
The Beysib stood up. Samlor poked at his groin, missed, but caught his opponent in the ribs with enough force to topple him again. Tudhaliya's swords snicked from either side, inches short of where Samlor gripped the pole. Chips flew, but the pole was seasoned ash and as thick as a man's wrist. Samlor thrust himself away, and the Beysib recoiled on to his back in the fire.
The naphtha sucked a fierce breeze from the tu
'My sweet, my love,' Samlor whispered as he turned back to the girl. 'I'm going to take you home, now.' The punt's flat bottom jounced easily over the stone as if the executioner's death had doubled the rescuer's strength.
'Are you taking me back to Mama Reia?' Star asked. She had watched Tudhaliya die with great eyes, which she now focused on Samlor.
The man splashed beside the boat for a few paces while the shingle foamed. Then he hopped aboard and thrust outwards for the length of the pole. Since the tide had turned, there was no longer need to fend off from the corniche. When they were thirty feet out, the Cirdonian set down the pole and worried loose the lashings of his oars with his spike-bladed push dagger. 'Star,' he said, now that he had leisure for an answer, 'Maybe we'll send for Reia. But we're going back to your real home - Cirdon. Do you remember Cirdon?' Inexpertly, the caravan-master began to fit the looms through the rope bights that served the punt for oarlocks.
Star nodded with solemn enthusiasm. She said, 'Are you really my uncle?'
Poling had raised and burst blisters on both Samlor's hands. The salt-crusted oar handles ground like acid-tipped glass as he began the unfamiliar task of rowing. 'Yes,' he said. 'I promised your mother - your real mother. Star, my sister ... I promised her -' and this was true, though Samlane was two years dead when her brother shouted the words to the sky - 'that I'd take care of oh. Oh, Mother Heqt. Oh, to have brought us so close.'
Lord Tudhaliya had not trusted his men on the shore to sweep up the cultists. Someone in the boat Tudhaliya had stationed off the headland had seen the man and child. The Beysib craft was a ten-oared cutter. It began to close the distance from the first strokes that roiled the phosphorescence and brought the cutter to Samlor's attention.
An archer stood upright in the cutter's bow. His first shot was' wobbly and short by fifty of the two hundred yards. He nocked another shaft, and the cutter pulled closer.
Samlor dropped his oars. He knelt and raised his hands. He did not trust his balance to standing up. 'Star,' he said, 'I'm afraid that these men have caught us after all. If I try to get away, something bad may happen to you by accident. And I can't fight them, I don't have any way to fight so many.'
Star peered over her shoulder at the Beysib cutter, then turned back to Samlor. 'I don't want to go with them. Uncle,' she said pettishly. 'I want to go back to Cirdon. I want to play in the big house.'
'Honey,' Samlor said, 'sweetest ... I'm sorry. But we can't do that now, because of that boat.' The cutter was too big to overturn, the caravan-master was thinking. But perhaps if he jumped into the larger boat with his push dagger, in the confusion they might -
The Beysib archer pitched into the water.
It was a moment before Samlor realized that the man had fallen forward because the cutter had come to an abrupt halt beneath him. The swift craft had thrown up a bone of glowing spray. Now the spray's remnant curled forward and away from the cutwater as a diminishing furrow on the sea.
'Now can we go to Cirdon, Uncle?' the little girl asked. She lowered the hands she had turned towards the cutter. Either her voice had dropped an octave, or the caravan-master's mind was freezing down in sudden terror. The white tendrils of Star's hair blazed and seemed to writhe.
The cutter's bow lifted. The boat disappeared stern-first with a rush and a roar and the screams of her crew. A huge, sucker-blotched tentacle uncoiled a hundred feet skyward, then plunged back into the glowing sea.
Samlor's hands found the oars again. His mind was ice, and his muscles moved like flows of ice. 'Yes, Star,' he heard his voice say. 'We can go back to Cirdon now.'