Easy Betrayals by Richard Baker

return.”
    With two swift bounds he closed with the silver death’s-head and struck it with his hammer, but the weapon seemed to glance from the thing with little effect. From the blank eye sockets two sickly green rays sprang forth, blasting Miltiades back against the right-hand building with bone-jarring force. The paladin fell in a clatter of armor.
    Howling, Jacob sliced at the thing with his sword but missed. Belgin attacked with his rapier, but the narrow point seemed to slide off the old bone like a pat of butter skittering across a hot pan. The skull ignored them both and struck at Miltiades again with the twin emerald rays, pummelling the holy warrior as he tried to find his feet.
    “I can’t stop this thing!” the sharper cried.
    Beside him, Jacob backed up a couple of steps, glancing around. “More trouble coming up the alley,” he announced. “I’ll handle it.” The curly-haired fighter abandoned the floating skull and dashed back the way they’d come.
    Belgin tried to stab the creature again, but his rapier glided away under the influence of some magical force each time he struck at the skull. He risked one quick glance down the street. Whate’ver’s down there, Jacob had better handle it. I’ve got my hands full here. He saw nothing but impenetrable shadows and ruined buildings in that direction, and before he could make out what Jacob was up to, the skull thing turned on him.
    “Sentence has been passed on Miltiades of Tyr. Do not interfere,” it stated coldly.
    Belgin stared, frozen to the spot by the creature’s black gaze. Nearby, Miltiades groaned and pushed himself to his feet. The skull’s jaws gaped open as if in laughter, and it turned away from the sharper to finish off the paladin. I’ve got to do something! Wait… the building. That might work! The silver skull drifted beneath the overhanging porch to peer down at the paladin, almost as if it had a spectral foot to set on Miltiades’s neck. For a moment, it drifted just underneath the rotten roof timbers of the buildings porch. With desperate strength, Belgin whirled and kicked hard at a rotten post, cracking it. A second kick knocked it free.
    In a roaring crash of wood and debris, the porch collapsed, burying the skull under an avalanche of old timber. Belgin reeled back from the destruction, coughing
    from the dust and mold until his legs gave out. In between wracking gasps, he noticed Miltiades standing unsteadily, one hand clamped over a streaming wound in his side. The paladin picked his way over toward the sharper, hauling him upright.
    “Where’s Jacob?” Miltiades said. “We need to get off this street.”
    “He saw something behind us ,” Belgin rasped, but the act of speaking sent him into another paroxysm of coughing. When he looked up again, wiping his mouth, a pair of new silver skulls approached, these glowing with an azure blaze.
    “Belgin of Edenvale, you have interfered with the dead of Skullport,” one began. Its companion spoke in chorus: “Miltiades of Tyr—”
    From the alley mouth beside them, a brilliant bolt of lightning stabbed forth, forking to impale both guardians on white skewers of energy. In the blink of an eye both were blasted to shards in a rolling thunderclap that left Belgin’s ears ringing and his eyes dancing with spots. “What now?” he groaned.
    Miltiades shook his head. “I know not.” Grimacing in pain, he straightened and faced the darkness, hammer held lightly in one hand. His silver armor gleamed like a brand of faith in the stinking mire and rot of the dismal street. “Who goes there? Show yourself!”
    “I should have expected you to start a war with the powers of Skullport the moment you returned, Miltiades,” a woman’s voice replied. Stepping into the light, a tall woman of exquisite beauty and iron determination appeared, tapping a slender wand in her hand. Despite himself, Belgin blinked in astonishment. It wasn’t every day that he was rescued from certain