Guardian of the Night

26

After a few feet, the steps curled backward, heading even deeper beneath the house. A food cellar, perhaps, or a storage space. It mattered little. If Ghistreen came this way, it meant she had a means of escape and Bilain couldn't allow it. As she turned the corner, she saw a light, twin of the lantern in her hand. Ghistreen had not run as far ahead as Bilain had feared. She stepped down to the floor of the cellar, ready to continue her chase.

As soon as she began to take her bearings, something struck her and she almost dropped the lantern in shock. Shock and pain. During her life, in the army and the Watch, she had suffered her fair share of injuries, through accidents in training, or from lucky miscreants who managed to catch a strike against her, and she knew well this kind of pain.

She looked down to her waist to find something protruding from her side. A length of wood, with three fletchings at the end. An arrow? Down here? Before she could allow herself to acknowledge, the pain, she dropped away to the side, taking a sharp intake of breath as the arrow moved within her waist. Another arrow clattered against the wall where she had stood and Bilain searched for cover.

"You really think me fool enough to trap myself? Idiot peasant. I'm a Ganshorn! We know well how to fight." From the sound of Ghistreen's voice, she couldn't stand more than fifteen feet away, the creak of the wood of a bow drifting between them. "All I need do is accuse you, of anything, and people will believe me. You attacked me without warning. You started those fires for your own mad desires. I am a wealthy woman, widow of a Senator. This city bows to people like me."

From behind the shelves she found for cover, Bilain glanced out, looking for Ghistreen's position, snapping her head back as another arrow thudded into the wood of the shelving. She had caught only a glimpse of the cellar, but Bilain had seen enough. Ghistreen had an armoury down here. Enough weapons to arm a small army, and enough arrows to keep Bilain at bay for weeks, if she needed to.

But that was not all. Bilain saw barrels. All barrels looked much the same, but Bilain would gladly bet that these were the self-same whale oil barrels that Ghistreen had had transferred here. And, standing before those barrels, Ghistreen aimed the bow in Bilain's direction. In such an enclosed space, Bilain could not hope to get close to the woman, especially with the skill she had already shown with the bow. And Bilain could do less with the arrow in her side.

Grasping the arrow with one hand, the other above it, she took several quick breaths and snapped the arrow shaft from the fletchings. Blood trickled down her chin, trailing from where she had bitten her lip, but now she had something to bite upon as she finished the job. Again, she took breaths to prepare herself before dragging the remains of the arrow shaft through and out. The pain almost caused her to pass out, blood pouring from the wound, but rather that than suffer constant, blinding spikes of pain while trying to move with an arrow embedded in her side. She spat the piece of arrow shaft from her mouth and pressed hard against the wound.

Ghistreen had the advantage. Even more so should any of her remaining guards come down these stairs, and Bilain needed to get near her to use the bully stick. Were Kaluun here, she would simply cloak herself in shadow and flit, ghost-like, to Ghistreen's side before despatching the woman. Bilain had none of Kaluun's magic sensitive talents, however. She only had her bully stick and her lantern. Yet, without the lantern, Bilain could almost have the shadows on her side.

With a sharp blow, she extinguished the lantern's flame, allowing the darkness to fall about her, leaving Ghistreen the only one to stand in the light. Her lantern, as Bilain had noticed, sat atop one of those whale oil barrels, and that gave Bilain an idea. Taking a chance, she ducked her head out from the cover, sending her unlit lantern rattling across the cellar floor toward Ghistreen. An arrow flew, but came nowhere near Bilain, but it gave her an opening.