"Danik—" For a moment, young Reinhardt seemed to be about to try to free himself, but the other man's grasp tightened, draping the boy's arm across his own shoulders for support.

"We'll get out of this, alter Junge — all of us, mark you. I've come far enough to get you out of this place; fine fools we'd be to leave you behind...."

Danik of Ruritania glanced around his men, the able and the wounded, taking stock almost without thinking of who should lead the forefront of a fighting retreat and who should aid the wounded at the rear. Swordless, he had already mentally assigned himself to the latter. L'Aiglonne should bear his blade to any glory that might be won—

He caught sight of her at Osman's side, poised in mid-movement as if on the verge of flight, and thought for the first time how like a sword herself she was; and as unwitting of her own grace. High-tempered, blade-supple and proud — as dusky and fierce as a panther of far Cathay, and as lovely as she moved — and all the more so because she knew nothing of it and put on no airs.

She thought of herself as harsh-featured and plain: she had the brightness and beauty of a leaping blade. One day he would tell her so, watch the colour rise in her cheeks in a moment she would never forget, show her to herself as he saw her in truth— Their eyes met; and for a moment, his own breath unsteady, he could have crushed her in his arms. But Reinhardt's limping weight was dragging at his side, and time was pressing heavy upon them; and eyes must suffice. "Eagle's-daughter," he said, softly, in his own tongue.

Reinhardt stirred suddenly at that, looking up. "Danik — her son — I could not—"

"Jeannot's safe," Danik assured him swiftly. "He had the wit to hide — and the courage to save the ship; it was his tale that led me to you here. And the best gift you can give him is to let him see you again, safe and sound...."

He glanced round again. "Osman!"

They had sailed together for so long that the briefest of exchanges served to outline their plan of retreat. He would have trusted Osman with the most precious thing he had without a moment's qualm; he did so now. It was Osman, who knew him best, who put the final question.

"And if aught goes amiss?"

Danik drew a breath, met the calm, shrewd eyes of the friend he'd known since boyhood, and looked away. "No. Get L'Aiglonne out — at all costs. I'll take care of the rest. No heroics, alter Freund. Not this time."

"You gave your word as Schelstein to see her safe when all this first began," Osman prompted softly after a moment, with a glance at Reinhardt. "One word from her in Martinique, and Edmond can never show his face...."

Their eyes met again, Danik with one eyebrow raised, Osman's gaze steady as ever. It was Danik who smiled first. "Exactly...."

He reached out with his left hand to grip the other man's shoulder for an instant, and felt Osman's own hand come up briefly to cover his, before he turned to give the orders that would clear the room. A handful to the rear, to shield and help the wounded; the rest to form a fighting screen ahead and clear the way. "Go — go!"

The passage was still clear when he reached it, last of them to leave; but even as he sent a quick glance round to check, the first clash of arms sounded from ahead. Wizened little Dietrich, half-hanging on his companion's arm for support, pulled a mock-grimace that had nothing to do with his bandaged side. "Just for once, Herr Graf, it would be a fine thing to leave a castle in the usual way, with no-one chasing us — don't you think?"

"Just for you, Dietrich, I'll bear it in mind...." Danik returned the general grin. "Come now, boys — no glory for us, worse luck. Keep your powder dry for next time, and let's move out before those fire-eaters up in front leave us standing. And if you can't milk those little scratches of yours to the tune of a round of drinks apiece the next time we make port, then you're not the shameless rogues I take you for...."

He did not doubt that, when all was done, Osman would win them through. For himself, he had kept the more thankless task; to chivvy the struggling few along faster than they could well manage, with insult and jest and all that he could spare of his own strength. Reinhardt made no complaint, but the young man's ashen face bore token to the effort that was draining him, and his weight bore more and more heavily on his captain's arm.

Two passageways and a laborious stair brought them out on a lower parapet into unexpected sunlight that took them for a moment off guard. A bare half-minute later, that same sudden brightness was to prove their salvation.

Hot light on white summer-baked stone, after the darkness of the stairwell. The pistol-shot was a flat crack of sound in the open air. It missed Danik's cheek by the measure of a sun-dazzled hair's-breadth, and set a shallow scar into the door-jamb beyond.

All of them had swung round instinctively. At their backs, in the face of the tower, lay the shadowed opening of a second stair and the promise of escape; in the doorway they had just left, unforeseen pursuers were spilling out onto the few yards of walkway that separated them, half-blinded on the sun-drenched wall-top. A second shot cracked out, and Danik felt a stinging trickle of blood at his throat as the stone splintered.

"Get back—" His left hand — his sword-hand — was free; he sought the single pistol at his belt, drew and cocked it in one motion. At his side the others were doing likewise, turning at bay.

"Get back!" He thrust Reinhardt behind him, towards the stair, as the youngster staggered. "Dietrich—" the old sailor had perhaps the steadiest head among them — "the command is yours. Get this door bolted. I'll hold them off as best I may, and join you after—"

Barely half a dozen men, opposite, and one who seemed their leader. They had come down from above to take the intruders from behind; no picked sortie, this, but a chance handful put together by a leader who had not lost his head. Danik had never set eyes on the man — but the cool resource had a very familiar taste.

Audacity was his only hope. He stepped forward, sketching a low salute. Behind him, the door's dull echo told him that his men were safe, and his eyes began to dance. "Monsieur Edmond, I take it? My congratulations — I believe you almost won...."

The merest flicker of uncertainty; but it was enough. Danik had him.

"You play a losing hand well, monsieur." Edmond's deep voice almost achieved a drawl. "Your ship, I presume? I should have known I had a worthier opponent than dear Ernestine...."

Danik of Ruritania looked at him blankly for a moment; then laughed. "L'Aiglonne? You underestimate her, mon brave — you always have. I would that I might be present on the day when you taste her true steel...."

Losing hand it might be — but while he kept his nerve Edmond could not know that for sure. And every moment that his adversary hesitated to attack was another moment snatched for Dietrich and the rest.

Danik slipped his right hand down to his belt-dagger, taking a lazy side-step closer to the parapet under the guise of a confident swagger. He'd chanced to catch a glimpse of a sloping roof below, built against the wall; but he did not now permit his glance to stray even for an instant in that direction.

"If your intrusion was in quest of this so-redoubtable lady, monsieur, I fear you are sadly behind the times." Edmond's eyes were narrowed against the glare, and his temples bore a faint sheen from the heat, but the beat of the vein there was steady and untroubled. "You would have done well to be better-informed ere thus venturing within my grasp; for I give you fair warning that incompetence in no way justifies this incursion—"

He was good. Very good, Danik acknowledged ruefully. The signal, when it came, was almost too subtle to see. Almost.

Danik had the merest hint of warning, as Edmond's stance shifted a fraction before he broke off. In the next moment they were upon him, a concerted rush to pull down the lone defender, and the pistol kicked in his hand as he let off his single shot.

Perchance it struck home as he had hoped — if so, he never saw. A heroic last stand had formed no part of his intent from the start; he was moving even as he fired, his free hand reaching for the wall to his right, and the warm stone slammed home against his palm as he flung himself up... over.... And then it was at this moment that a heavy body grappled for his, striking him almost in mid-air as if fore-warned of his leap, and Danik lost his balance and fell.

A hard arm was clamped about his throat, and they fell together with bruising force, Danik undermost, his arched body crashing brutally back against the parapet as his vault was cut short. Spreadeagled across the wall, he clawed for breath, unsure for a moment if his limbs would still function. Edmond's face was very close to his own, distorted now in triumph as he held him pinned, and for a moment the pressure at his throat slackened.

Empty space was yawning beneath his shoulders, sole remnant now of a failed escape.... Danik of Ruritania took a deep breath, let his weight shift, and, with the spasmodic violence of a drowning man, launched them both over the edge.

He felt cracked rafters yield under them as they struck, with a force that tore loose the death-like grip of his opponent and sent them sliding faster and faster down a sagging roof in a shower of tiles. A dozen yards away, the cliff-edge beckoned, in a dizzying void filled only by the distant hiss of the sea — sun-drenched walls stretched upwards above them at ever-increasing speed, as the tower window he'd once hoped to attain from the refuge of this roof dwindled inexorably out of reach—

Abruptly, he was falling through empty space. Danik twisted desperately as his shoulders left the roof, clawing to gain one final purchase as the tiles slid away, felt his fingers for a moment catch on the gutter and hold... and then, as his body swung inward, torn loose by the speed of his own descent, fell heavily for a yawning second of despair. An instant later, the breath was knocked out of him by the blessed solidity of stone.

The sky was very blue above. It was hard to remember that there was something he must do... something so easy he had done it all his life, almost without thinking, and yet just now seeming an all but insuperable burden.... Above the roaring in his ears, he could hear the thin piping of voices overhead and see the gesticulations on the parapet, outlined against the blue. He wondered, vaguely, what they were shouting about... tiny black specks were starting to dance before his eyes....

His chest heaved suddenly, with a jolt, as air-starved lungs took over, and Danik found himself breathing again in great gasps that racked injured ribs and brought consciousness flooding back. He rolled over, gasping, and struggled to his feet. Barely ten feet away, his opponent had his pistol drawn and reloaded.

The space in which the adversaries were thus confronted was the merest pocket-handkerchief of stone upon the thickness of the outer wall, a lengthwise wedge where two higher fortifications merged and met, like some hidden courtyard in a tenement square, where crowded, leaning slopes afford a sudden glimpse of the open street beyond. Save that here the open street was open cliff that bordered on the sky, with a token guardian rim, and the enclosing walls that yawned above were no gap-toothed hutches, balcony-festooned, but massive and windowless works of stone. There was no escape — but one, and that lay over the edge of the rim, down through one of the windows that pierced the outer fortification itself.

All this, Danik perceived in an instant; and perceived likewise that the chances of their bruising descent had placed Edmond between himself and that vertiginous exit, and that the other man not only held a loaded firearm but had contrived to retain his sword, while he, Danik, had neither. The empty pistol lay barely a yard from his feet, its dulled metal bent and scarred from the rigours of the fall. He stooped, mechanically, to pick it up, and watched as his opponent brought his weapon to bear, smiling.

And then a shot cracked past from above, with a ricochet whine that sent them both flinching, and Edmond snapped out a single, graphic, phrase on the parentage and probable destination of the over-enthusiastic marksman that had Danik's brows soaring in eloquent admiration.

"Get that door down — get after the rest of the interlopers, you —" A further choice epithet blistered the air. "I'll take some pleasure in dealing with this annoyance myself... in person."

From which, and by a certain stiffness in his movements, Danik deduced with unconcealed satisfaction that he himself had not been the only one to suffer in their mutual downfall.

"Your vocabulary is very eloquent, monsieur," he observed with meaning, risking a swift upward glance. There were no longer any figures to be seen on the parapet above. "One might almost suppose your formative years had been spent in the slums of Saint-Antoine...."

But his opponent failed to rise to the suggestion. He was regarding him with a form of abstract distaste which was not at all to Danik's liking, as if the Ruritanian were no more than a troublesome fly. "I fail to see that my lineage comes into the question... and as for yours, the sole interest would lie therein if you should find yourself in sudden need of a tombstone...."

Danik weighed the battered mass of the pistol in his left hand, the barrel warm to his touch. He was watching the little black mouth that was rising steadily in his adversary's grasp to take an unwavering aim, and the calm, emotionless gaze beyond it. His own eyes, alive as ever with laughter, had begun once more to dance. "M. Edmond, there remain to me two things in this world of which I would make you a gift without regret: the name, as it happens, that I bear with honour — Danilo Ilitsch von Schelstein-Hortig zu Metterschau — and this!"

In the instant before the other man fired, the useless weapon had left Danik's hand, flung sidelong with all the strength he could muster. It struck true.

The weight of it alone would have been enough. Edmond's pistol, smashed loose from a numbed grasp, flew sidelong against the slope of the wall behind him, discharging its load, and span off at a low angle that barely grazed upon the parapet-rim to his right. For a moment, absurdly, Danik found himself counting seconds. But if the weapon struck rock or water at the foot of the cliff, then the sound of it was swallowed by the constant wash of the sea.

He had little enough attention to spare for such niceties. Edmond, enraged, had disregarded stinging fingers and drawn his blade in a fury, and Danik, driven backwards, must perforce snatch out his belt-dagger; and then it was knife against sword, left hand against right, with the odds — he had to own it — immeasurably in favour of the swordsman.

Few men had experience in countering a left-handed blade. That happenstance had served him well in the past, but now it was not enough. In closer quarters he might have had a chance; but for all the cramped footing, there was enough space here to accommodate Edmond's most savage blows and to spare, and for all his reach he could not get close enough to score upon the shorter man save by the most prodigious feat of luck.

In the first flurries of their exchange, Danik of Ruritania had retained the hope that he might somehow prevail. In the moments that followed, he acknowledged, discarding his pride, that the best he could hope for was to come off with his life intact. And even that was beginning to seem an increasingly open question.

Intent upon that wedge of blue sky beyond his opponent which signalled salvation, he feinted backward, exposing his side to the inevitable stroke... and dodged swiftly to the left, diving forward, dagger-hand leading, darting for the momentary gap—

Fire seared along his forearm, numbing wrist and hand, and the blade bit home deep into his flesh. The agony of it harsh in his throat, Danik fell back with slackened fingers, helpless to cling to the hilt as it fell away. The dagger clattered on the ground, ringing dully on rough stone as Edmond thrust it aside, and came to a halt.

Out of reach.

For an instant both men stared at it as Danik fell back another pace, blood running down across his hand. Then Edmond smiled, and began to advance. Danik's grey gaze met that of his opponent, steady to the last; and read death there.

Not for the first time in his life; but, so far as it was in his power to presume, for the last. He was losing blood, he found... a great deal of blood. He took a final step back, eyes fixed on that remorseless face, and found himself, unaccountably, falling as the world blurred around him. The stone came up to hit him from behind, jolting him half-upright as the blade came down.

It hurt, as he'd known it would. Hurt him more than he'd realised he could bear, and not cry out. More than he'd known he could live through. Edmond's smile had widened.

"Damn you —" the words escaped him between clenched teeth — "at least have the honour to make it clean—"

Agony. Mother Church, receive my soul and aid me to endure until the end....

Half-dreaming, he saw her face, L'Aiglonne, haloed with sunlight, as he would always see it; blazing with furious beauty and with pride.