The Trials of Trass Kathra by Mike Wild Page A

herself, confused. What was her husband on about, patient? They all of them had swords at their throats and as far as she could see there was no immediate way out of this predicament. Then her eyes caught sight of what Aldrededor had obviously been referring to. While the rest of them had simply dropped their weapons her husband had managed to conceal his. The crackstaff was perched at an angle between the flaps of the bar and, what was more, remained charged, crackling softly to itself, out of sight. Dolorosa did not fully understand these strange devices but one thing she did know was that, if left idle like this, the crackstaff would eventually purge itself of pent-up energy.
    There was going to be a bang.
    “Everybody,” she said, meaning her own people, “I suggest you sticka your heads between your knees.”
    Regulars and Swords alike looked at Dolorosa questioningly, but it was already too late.
    From the tip of the crackstaff erupted a bolt of darting, twisting blue energy that blew the flaps off the bar and struck a Sword who had the bad luck to be standing in its way. The energy bolt tore through his body armour into his chest, exposing the white bone of his sternum. He was punched into the air, slamming into and smashing another of the tavern’s windows. The flaps, meanwhile, both solid chunks of wood the size of sewer grates, blew to the left and the right in an explosion of splinters, hitting two more of the Swords, decapitating one and shattering the sword arm of another. These men, or what remained of them, flailed into their own, and in the chaos that ensued Aldrededor and the others made their moves.
    The swarthy Sarcrean pushed his captor from him, leapt and rolled back over the bar, then snatched the crackstaff from where it now lay on the floor. He discharged it into the face of a Sword who tried to follow. Dolorosa used far more primitive but no less effective weapons, snatching her twin blades from beneath her and simultaneously thrusting them back and up, hissing in satisfaction as she felt them puncture flesh. As she rolled from beneath the Sword’s collapsing body, she booted Red’s club over to where the giant poacher could grab it. As he bent to do so, a Sword who tried to stop him found himself with a new and unique perspective on life as Red’s club swung round solidly, knocking his head permanently sideways.
    Dolorosa snatched a glance at Morg, whom she noticed had retreated a few risers back up the stairs from where he watched the battle with narrowed eyes, and then at her husband, who was sweating and grinning as much as she.
    “Justa like the old days on the sheep!” she declared and, though it showed her skull and crossbone bloomers for all to see, couldn’t resist bounding onto and from a table, using a curtain as she might a sail to swing out across the room and boot two more of their captors in the face and off their feet. She landed on the bar and from there urged on Red and Ronin. The giant first swung his nailed club up between the legs of another Sword, and then grabbed the poor unfortunate by the neck, racing him across the tavern to ram his head into the bragging box, where he collapsed twitching and screaming, stung by whatever was inside. Ronin, for his part, moved through the Swords with his hammer swinging in a blur, forcing all before him to dodge or duck the momentum of the heavy blacksmithing tool. Even Hetty Scrubb and Pete Two-Ties helped out, the former reducing one Sword to a spasming heap by blowing him a faceful of her latest herbal concoction, while Pete confounded another by more intellectual means.
    “Stop!” he shouted, as the Sword was about to bring the hilt of his weapon down on him. The Sword was surprised enough to do so. “I half faint, sorting out these idiots!”
    “What?” the Sword said, bemused.
    “Anagram!” Pete emphasised, punching a finger at the cryptosquare in the newssheet he held. “Five, five...”
    “What the fark are you