“Come on Paulus, ya runt!” shouted the eldest Shadowsoldier impatiently. “Get on with it! We all wanna have a go!”

     “Perhaps he doesn’t know how to,” suggested a second, and they all laughed hilariously. The boy blushed in embarrassment and the power of the cleric’s soothing words was broken. He lay back down on top of her, handling her roughly and angrily, and Diana’s fear began to return. This is it, she knew. I can’t put him off any longer. He threw her legs open and prepared to enter her like a murderer plunging a dagger into the heart of his victim, but at that moment he was distracted by a sound coming from a few feet away, a cry of shock and fear. He looked around, and the cleric felt him stiffen in fear at what he saw.

     Another Shadowsoldier, who’d bullied the others into letting him have first go at the black girl, suddenly found himself sitting astride a gigantic black cat, lying on its back under him. One gasp of surprise was all he had time for before the cat threw him off with a shrug of its massively powerful body and then tore his chest open with a single blow from a huge forepaw. The other Shadowsoldiers stood paralysed with shock, staring dumbly at the fallen body of their former comrade, and that paralysis cost most of them their lives as the giant cat, fully twelve feet long and weighing at least half a ton, tore into them.

     Paulus jumped off Diana and ran naked into the forest, screaming in terror. The cleric scrambled away from the fighting, scared of something heavy landing on her. She struggled to her feet and ran over to the nearest tent, crouching down to hide behind it. A few Shadowsoldiers had managed to draw their weapons but seemed unable to do anything but stare in horror as Naomi turned the others into a gory, pulpy mass. By the time they managed to collect their wits and fight back, there were only a handful left.

     Suddenly Diana remembered Shaun and Dennis and crept timidly around to the other side of the tent to see what was happening to them. The half dozen or so shologs were also staring in surprise at the fighting, but their amazement soon turned into a savage joy. This was something they enjoyed even more than torture! They grabbed their weapons and ran over to join in, leaving the Beltharans unguarded.

     Diana ran from tent to tent, trying to make her way unseen over to them. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be concerned with the giant black cat that had mysteriously materialised in the middle of their camp and no-one saw her. She almost gave herself away, though, when she saw what the shologs had done to her brother and cried out in anguish.

     The two soldiers looked like a high school science project that had gone badly wrong. There was almost no part of their bodies that wasn’t covered with a sheen of drying blood and feasting flies. Several pieces of metalwork had been left in their flesh, each one as finely crafted as a surgeon’s scalpel. The light of the camp’s torches flickered and danced on the gleaming steel with the light breeze that blew through the camp.

     The two soldiers were barely conscious, but Shaun managed to summon the strength to open one eye, aware that something was happening. He was only able to utter a single low moan when he saw Diana, though, before his head flopped down again.

     The cleric turned her back on him, sobbing in anguish, and pressed her bound hands against his body while she prayed tearfully for Caroli to heal him. The Goddess responded instantly and Diana gasped as she felt the torrent of holy power flooding through her, more holy power than she’d ever before channeled in one go. Her whole body tingled as it flooded through it and she imagined it ageing her a little, putting the first fine lines on her face. She didn’t care, though. She didn’t care if this single healing turned her into a doddering grey haired wreck so long as it healed her brother.

     When it was over she dropped to her knees in exhaustion, her long, chestnut hair falling around her face like a curtain. New strength and hope came to her, though, when she heard a voice behind her. “Di! Di! Can you get me off this thing?”

     She jumped back to her feet and spun around, overjoyed to see Shaun as good as new, struggling vainly on the torture frame. “You’ve got to release me before they get back!”

     “I can’t!” replied the cleric, half turning to show him her bound hands.

     The soldier slumped in despair. “Then we’re sunk!” he said. “We’re finished!”

     “No we’re not!” said Diana fiercely. “My Lady says Tom and the others are coming. We’ve just got to hold out until they get here.”

     She ran over and healed Dennis, crying out again as the power flooded through her body. This time the healing drained her so much that she fell to the ground and lay there gasping while Shaun hissed at her urgently. “Use your teeth!” he told her. “Try to climb up on the frame and untie us with your teeth!” Diana nodded wearily and struggled back to her feet.

     “What is going on?” cried a new voice, and the cleric shrieked in fear as the Shadowwizard reappeared, staring around the camp in disbelief. “What in the name of the Gods...”

     He stared at the shologs and the handful of remaining humans who had a giant black cat surrounded and were trying to kill it while remaining out of reach of its fearsome teeth and claws, and he stared at Shaun and Dennis, who still seemed to be in perfect health despite having been worked on by the shologs for some time. Then he saw Diana, her naked body now streaked with grime and dirt, and he ran over to her, grabbing her roughly by the arm before she could get away.

     “Let her go!” cried Shaun desperately, struggling like a madman. The wooden frame creaked, but remained firm. The soldier was held as helplessly as ever.

     Then the soldier cried out in joy as three darts of blazing light flew out of the forest, swerving to avoid the cleric’s body and striking the wizard in the side, making him cry out in agony as small flames flashed in his clothing. Diana took the chance to tear herself out of his grasp and run away in the direction from which the firebolts had come, while the Shadowwizard looked up in fear and anger, looking for whoever it was who’d dared to attack him.

     Teasel and Arroc ran into the camp, the trog screaming a battlecry as he hefted his scimitar and the nome freeing Diana’s hands with a few strokes of her small knife. It was the third newcomer who attracted the Shadowwizard’s attention, though, and Diana felt a savage delight as she saw his eyes widening with fear. Thomas was carrying no weapon and wearing no armour, but the set of his body told everyone in the camp that he was ready to fight. There was no way he was anything other than a wizard. His clothes, all a light shade of blue and with all the pockets for his spell components, might as well have been a uniform, and he was clearly as mad as hell...

☆☆☆

    The Shadowwizard raised his hands as he prepared to cast an attack spell, and Thomas did the same. They were both casting the same spell, so theoretically they should both have reached their culmination at the same time. The Shadowwizard was an externum, though. Trained by a solitary wizard who had, himself, been the apprentice of a solitary wizard. Back and back and back. Generation by generation, each one passing on their mistakes and their bad practices to their successor.

     Thomas, on the other hand, was a University wizard. Trained by a whole team of wizards each of whom was counted among the best in the world. He was the product of a system of excellence that had been refined and perfected for nearly two thousand years. Thomas completed the spell first, therefore, and three more firebolts flew from his pointing finger, striking his enemy squarely in the chest and making him cry out in agony again while his own spell fizzled out uselessly in his hands.

     The Shadowwizard fell to his knees, gasping in agony, and Thomas took the opportunity to look around the camp. Arroc had cut the ropes binding Shaun and Dennis to the torture frames with a few well placed swings of his scimitar and the two soldiers were now searching around for something to use as a weapon. Diana and Teasel were hiding behind a tent on the edge of the camp. Teasel had lent Diana one of her shawls, which the cleric had tied gratefully around her waist, and they were watching anxiously as Arroc, Shaun and Dennis went to the aid of Naomi, still surrounded by Shadowsoldiers who weren’t yet aware of the new arrivals. Thomas saw Diana look in his direction, and frowned in puzzlement as the cleric shouted a warning. He looked around just in time to see the Shadowwizard completing another spell and then it was his turn to scream as an agony beyond anything he’d thought possible tore through his body.

     Fool! he cursed himself as he writhed on the ground. You had him! You had him and you gave him a chance to recover! Now he’s got the advantage and you’ll pay for your stupidity with your life!

     He forced his eyes open, to see the Shadowwizard standing over him, a look of triumph on his face. “You’ll pay for your lack of respect!” he said, and he began the chanting of another spell.

     Now the Shadowwizard had made a mistake, though. He’d come too close. Thomas flung his hand out, felt it connect with a rotten, fallen branch and threw it with all his strength. He hadn’t had time to aim it properly and by all rights it should have missed or fallen short, but by some stroke of luck it struck the enemy wizard on the shoulder, breaking his concentration and spoiling the spell. The Shadowwizard screamed in fury, drew his dagger and threw himself madly at the blue wizard.

     Thomas managed to grab the Shadowwizard’s wrist and deflected the knife so that it merely grazed his shoulder, and then he was lying on his back, desperately trying to hold the knife away from his throat while his arrow wound screamed at him and kept him from using all his strength. Even if he'd had all his strength, though, the Shadowwizard was bigger and stronger than he was and Thomas knew he couldn’t hold him off for long. It was pretty ironic really, he thought as he gasped with the effort. Here they were, two wizards, supposedly more intelligent than other people and educated to a higher standard, capable of harnessing strange powers and commanding unknown forces, and here they were brawling in the dirt like a pair of common thugs. He’d been trained to solve his problems using his brain, but now he was going to live or die according to his brute physical strength.

     The knife came lower and lower and there was nothing he could do to stop it. It touched his throat, just below the small scar left by the Mad Woman of Andor over a year before. He felt a sharp pain, and the dampness of blood running down his neck...