The castle walls posed no barrier as Ulrem and Kinro climbed to the foot of Brokewrist Castle in the half-light of a dull moon. One door had fallen aside, leaving gaps not unlike a battered grin. The locals had long ago purloined the best stones from the curtain wall that surrounded the castle, leaving low runs in the masonry that could have been climbed with relative ease.

Vines choked the walls and small bushes burst from the base of the wall. Many seasons of such growth had undermined what once would have been a formidable defense. Now, it was a sorrow-wracked derelict holding on to little more than sour memories.

The keep beyond was three stories of dressed stone, with dark portals that looked out on the bailey blindly. Only the one window had light emanating from within, unwavering but thin and gauzy. The great arched doors of the keep stood some ten feet tall, with heavy, scrolling stonework set above them bearing cavorting animals and twisting faces. Flecks of paint clung in the recesses, whispering of the splendor this squalid place had once known.

Ulrem surveyed the broken tower, some hundred paces further down the yard. Heaps of rubble remained where the stonework hadn’t been carted off by opportunistic builders. The tower had collapsed from somewhere near its midpoint, dumping tons of stones and lumber down onto the roof of the keep and into the yard. It was clear there was no longer access to the tower from the ground level.

“You’ve been in the keep?” Ulrem asked, looking up at the pale light in the highest window. Ledges ran like bands around the face of the building, clearly marking out the stories. Decorative engravings in the stonework now pooled shadows like the sockets of a death mask.

“Twice,” said his companion, lighting up the steps. The hinges screeched as Kinro put his shoulder to them, forcing it slowly aside. Ulrem lent his strength too, and the door swung quickly open. With a thunderous smash, it crashed against the inner wall. The sound seemed to shiver in the very bones of the castle. Dust and stones fell from the shadows above.

“Dreary,” said Ulrem. “Did you close that door when you left?”

“Not I,” Kinro said as he led the way deeper into the vaulted cavity of the keep’s front hall. Stone steps twisted up to a balustrade above.

There came the slightest noise from the depths ahead. Ulrem dropped into a half squat, his hand moving to the leather-wrapped hilt of his sword. All was silent save the sifting of the dust that had been knocked free by their entrance.

Despite the suffocating pause, Ulrem’s fighting instincts told him something had passed in the gloom, on the very edge of his senses. Like a wolf at bay, he waited, hand on hilt and ready to spring into action, his eyes glittering and livid.

Kinro whirled, belting a hissing curse, and launched a hissing missile towards the broken balcony that lined the stairs. Ulrem watched the knife impact the wall above the balustrade. Dashing into action, he bounded up the steps ahead of the smaller man, Braveblade already fast in his fist.

Nothing. He turned to face Kinro.

“I felt the wind change,” the little man said with a bow of his head. He stooped and picked up his knife, holding it up for Ulrem to see. There, on the deadly edge, was a thin line of something dark and sticky. But too black to be blood, even by moonlight.

Ulrem grunted, looking around him, trying to sense movement in the dark.

“Something hunts us from the shadows,” Kinro muttered with a warding gesture.

“Good. Let us draw it out if we can.”

They climbed higher in the castle, Kinro ahead and Ulrem with a wary eye on their backs. The floor had rotted out in many places, leaving dark abscesses that threatened to pitch them into the depths below. Kinro crouched beside one door and fished something out of the detritus: a child’s doll with a wooden head fixed to a baglike cloth body. It was spotted with flowers of dried brown blood.

Ulrem tightened his grip on his sword until his knuckles popped.

They filtered through the inner spaces like wraiths, but nothing else darted out or attacked them in their searching, though shadows moved and black wings flapped leathery wings from time to time.

In all their searching, Ulrem saw no passage to the higher floor. He had supposed from the first that it would be a guarded, private quarters for the occupants of the keep. Their one up to that highest floor was blocked by many tons of rubble. They finished their prowling of the second floor and peered through broad windows that overlooked the broken front gate.

Kinro rested his hand upon the wooden hilt of his long curved sword. “You see?” he said. “The creature must wait above, yet I do not know the way.”

Ulrem rubbed his jaw. “I do,” he said. Sheathing Braveblade on his back, Ulrem turned to face the windows. He flexed his enormous shoulders and wound his thick arms about their sockets, limbering up.

Then, with the certain but measured tread of a man well used to the winters of fear, he stepped up and onto the ledge of the window. Dozens of feet below, the cracked, weed-pocked flagging of the bailey lay cloaked in blue shadow. Faint starlight sharpened the hard edges of everything, casting a deadly aspect on the night. Ulrem glanced up. There was enough of a ledge that ran along the outside of the wall that, with care, he could move along, sliding one foot at a time.

Steadily, he moved out past the ledge, his heel hanging in the void. Then another. He made his way carefully along, fingers gripping the meagerest of gaps in the dressed stone above him. After he had shuffled a few feet, Kinro joined him.

They crept across the ledge that way, each man’s breathing as tense as a garrote, sweat beading on their brows as they slithered along their fingers-wide footing, hearts racing to betray fear that their hard faces did not show.

The corner of the building had been built such that alternating layers of stone jutted out slightly at this height, giving some hope of a foothold. Ulrem probed forward with hand and foot, eager for the feeling of firm stone beneath his boots again.

It was as he neared the corner that their foe struck. Sweeping out of the air, a cacophony of black wings and gleaming obsidian claws: a great bird slammed into Ulrem. Unable to let go of the wall, he bellowed a curse and tried to shake it free as the thing ripped at his back. His thin tunic was little protection against razor talons. Still, Ulrem did not let go. Having no other choice, he gathered his strength into his knees, preparing to leap backward and grab the beast that ripped at him. He would carry it to hell.

Hark! An upward stroke of silver. Ulrem heard it more than saw it; a rumor of starlight upon steady blade. The beast shrieked and fell towards the ground.

Kinro did too. His free hand scrabbled for purchase on the wall, but the power of the slash had carried his feet too far into space. Kinro did not drop his sword as he plummeted backward.

Ulrem’s hand shot out. With fingers of iron, he caught the front of Kinro’s loose robe with one hand, and desperately clutched the wall with the fingertips of his other.

“Heavy,” he groaned.

Kinro glanced at the ground below him. A fall from that height to uneven stone would surely break his legs, or worse. “Do it, Ulrem,” he said flatly.

“No,” Ulrem said between bared teeth. His control was slipping. All of his battle-worn strength was precariously balanced. The long, lean whipcords of his arms stood out like snakes that writhed up into his neck. He felt the ring stirring, heat rising in the golden band on his finger. Offering strength and fury in equal measure.

Kinro’s free hand worked at Ulrem’s fingers, trying to pry them free. “I am a petal in the wind,” he chanted. “I fly and fall where the wind wills.”

As if summoned by this strange prayer, a harsh gust of cold breeze caught the side of the building.

“Early graves...are never ready,” Ulrem grated. There was no choice for it, he saw. He seized on the light of the ring, let its power flow up and into him, until his muscles felt as if they were afire, as if he could crush the stone itself. Then, with a savage roar so loud that the dogs in the town below began barking a motley chorus, he heaved Kinro up, throwing him bodily at the ledge above them.

Kinro disappeared through the dark window. Freed of his burden, Ulrem felt ten times lighter. His muscles sang with the power of the ring, and his nose was filled with the scent of his own blood dribbling down his back, soaking the ruined tunic. He wasted no more time, climbing the overlapped cornering and scrambling up to the higher sill himself.

Kinro helped him up and in. “Your back!” he gasped as Ulrem staggered and caught himself against the wall. Though he longed to lie on the muddy, tiled floor, Ulrem turned to look down at the bailey far below. Only then did he relinquish his hold on the ring. The fires retreated, but did not fade. Now they were awake, watchful. Ready to act.

“No corpse,” he growled, ignoring his companion. There was no sign of it, save the wounds scrawled across the taut muscle of his back. “What is this thing that struck at us?”

“A demon, surely, or some fell creature of the air.” Kinro surveyed the room around him. He had not sheathed his sword, but held it before him with a double-fisted grip.

“Men and beasts bleed,” Ulrem said. “I think it is a demon of some sort, crawled out of the shadows to feed.” He unsheathed Braveblade again and led the way deeper into the floor.

Kinro hesitated. “How did you throw me thus?” he asked. “No man I know has such strength.”

Ulrem glanced over his shoulder at the smaller man. “I am Ulrem the Slayer.”

“Aye,” Kinro said with a bow. “And others call you Ulrem the Inheritor, son of Imaahis.”

“People talk too much.” He said no more of it.

Ulrem stalked in a low position into the corridor beyond. He was ready for a fight now. He had been blooded, and primal rage simmered behind his gray eyes, driving him forward. There was a sour animal reek in the air—and something else, too. Unwashed man-flesh, foul, and rank, and corrupt.

He smelled sorcery in the air.