At last Blade lay on his back on the ground, looking up at the men standing around him. He could feel the ground under him damp with blood, some of it his from wounds that hadn't started to hurt yet. They probably wouldn't have time to start, either. He'd be dead first. The six remaining men all held their bloody weapons in their hands, and all of them had their eyes on him. He could sense murderous hostility in all of them, even though their faces were as blank as ever.

Then the leader was stepping forward, pushing the men away from Blade. Four of them went readily, two of them taking positions by the end of the bridge. The other two darted away across the bridge. Blade wondered vaguely where they were going in such a hurry, then the last two men drew his attention.

They showed no sign of moving. They stood with their legs wide apart, swords in their hands, eyes shifting from Blade to the leader and back again to Blade. Blade sensed that they now felt not only murderous hostility toward him, but defiance toward their leader. He wished he could get up and help the leader, but had no hope of doing so. He'd already lost too much blood, and if he tried to rise he'd lose more. Then he'd die, whatever happened between the leader and his two mutinuous warriors.

So Blade lay still, and he was lying still when the leader's staff flicked out. The sharp end seemed to leap across the space between the leader and one of the men. Blade half expected it to pierce the man like a spear, but the point only brushed across one arm. The other man stiffened and began to turn. Before he could complete the movement the staff flicked out a second time, the tip grazing the second man's cheek.

For a long moment no one moved. It was as if the two men had been paralyzed so completely they couldn't even fall over. Blade wondered how this had happened. They certainly hadn't been beaten into submission. The staff had struck no harder than a pinprick. Yet in a single moment all the defiance seemed to have gone out of them.