Chapter seventeen
The gathering of shadowsI looked down into lustrous brown Vallian eyes. I saw that glowing face. I saw and I could not understand.
Almost, almost, then, I was a dead man.
But the longsword, of itself, sliced and slashed and the two Chuliks screamed and spun away, bloody wrecks.
The blood dripped down my face from the razor slashings of the steel claw.
“Dayra?”
Zankov screamed again: “Now is your chance, Dayra! Slay the rast and have done.”
I stepped back, out of the lethal swing of the claw and kicked Zankov in the side of the head. He slumped. My left hand reached for the last hooked chain.
“So mother was right, after all, and these fools wrong,” she said, this girl, this Ros the Claw who was my little daughter Dayra. “For no other man could do what you have done
