dwarf, human, or half-breed had expected to play the solitary fool and was stunned to be part of a group instead. The templars lost their natural advantage in that hesitation. The raver attacked the hapless musician who played dirges, but did not notice death approaching.
The youth screamed as the long knife came down across his arms. His fragile pipes slipped from his hands and were crushed by his own weight and that of the madman who fell atop him.
With a scream of her own, an elf templar broke ranks with her hesitant peers. The razor-sharp petals of a punch-knife bloomed between the fingers of both fists before she dived across the floor and plunged them into the raver’s flanks below his ribs. Away from their tribe—and the templarate was as far from a tribe as an elf could get—Joat’s elven regulars usually stood aloof from any brawl, but they had notions of loyalty and friendship no non-elf could hope to understand, and this particular one had evidently taken the musician’s misfortune personally.
She seemed capable of finishing off the madman. Blood spurted from the punch-knife wounds, a reliable token of fatal injury, and she’d gotten a lethal arm around his neck. No one, including Joat, stepped forward to deliver a mercy blow.
But the madman they all believed mortally wounded writhed like a serpent in the elf’s grasp. Forgetting the musician, who had survived the initial attack and lay moaning, curled around his blood-soaked arms, the raver brought the spiked pommel of his long knife down on the elf’s undefended neck. She groaned once and went limp.
Oblivious to the blood streaming from his wounds, the raver got to his feet, holding his weapon too high, leaving his gut and legs unprotected. Anyone could see the inviting line of attack, but neither Joat nor any templar rushed to accept it. Something was seriously amiss: the raver should have bled to death by now.
Joat flexed his knees, sinking close to the ground—as only a dwarf could. He eased forward, brushing his bare feet in arcs that never lost contact with the dirt floor, never surrendered balance. The vital blood vessels and nerves at the top of the madman’s weapon-side leg were his target, but he was careful not to give himself away by looking there. Silently invoking Rkard, last of the dwarven kings, for luck, Joat sank another handspan into his crouch and waited for the opportunity.
He felt himself fall, but neither saw nor remembered the blow that toppled him. The raver’s long knife knocked his shorter weapon from his hand when he raised it in desperate defense. The stone-hard mekillot ribs of the bar saved his life, blocking the long knife’s cut. The composite blade broke from the force of the downstroke.
“Hamanu,” someone swore and several other templars repeated the word.
The magic student, still standing at the edge of Joat’s vision, had drawn a metal knife, not long enough to pierce the madman’s guard but sufficient for defense against the broken, composite blade. The student grunted at another burly human who carried an obsidian-edged sword. This second templar nodded in reply, and gripped his sword with both hands, while the student played shield for them both. Working as a team, they backed the raver from his victims, then the swordsman dealt a swallow-tail slash that left the madman’s weapon arm hanging by a mere flap of skin.
But, the madman kept to his feet—once again roaring his nonsense about the sun burning inside his skull. He used his remaining hand to pry his broken knife from the shock-clenched fist of his dangling arm. The templar pair stood in flat-footed stupor as the raver slashed me swordsman’s face with the broken blade and backhanded the student into the nearest wall.
“Mind-bender!” another voice shouted, offering the only possible explanation for what they’d witnessed.
No one else took up the attack. The madman remained where he was, cornered, grievously wounded, undefeated, and just possibly indefeasible. Everything that breathed on Athas had a jot of mind-bending talent, but templars wisely left theirs un-nurtured. King Hamanu did not look kindly on powers that he could not bestow, or withhold.
The blond templar with the broken teeth shoved a hand deep into the neckline of his tunic and withdrew a ceramic object Joat had sincerely never hoped to see exposed in his establishment.
“Hamanu!” the templar cried loudly—not an oath but a prayer. “Hear me, O Great and Mighty One!”
Other templars reached for the thongs around their necks. Their medallions were alike—baked slabs