In the crimson glare, men struggled. As Flane shot into the mass of men, he saw Vawdar, bound at wrist and ankle, leaning against the wall of a building.
"For Gleya!" snarled Flane, and ran his blade through a meknik's heart.
Now the hands of men were all around him, and their shoulders, smelly with sweat. He heard curses rasped in his ears, caught the glitter of a dagger raised to smite. Flane went in low on steel-thewed legs, lurched a shoulder to catch a meknik off balance and send him reeling into others with the keen edge of Flane's sword across his throat, severing his jugular vein.
The sword in his hand sang a strident song as it slithered around steel and drank from the heart of men. The blade danced and leaped. The best steel in Klarn was in that sword, and the finest hand for a hilt was wielding it. The mekniks gave stubbornly, but the dripping point that sprang out of the night for throat and chest would not be denied.
In the crimson glare, Flane's sword sang a strident song as it slithered around steel and drank from the heart of men.
Flane sliced a dagger across Vawdar's bonds, heard his swift, "They fight with strangers whom I do not know. Be swift, Flane, that we may escape!"
For the first time, the swordsman beheld his allies. They were Klarnva, all of them; muffled in long black cloaks from which only their arms that held their blades appeared. Klarnva, but unfamiliar to him.