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challenged.
    “Who do you think?” Rings answered. “Hold your blade, numbskull.”
    Jacob scowled fiercely but lowered his sword. “Where did this come from?” he shouted, waving one hand to indicate the brown gloom that surrounded them.
    “I think that Belgin’s guardians have finally taken note of us,” Rings answered. “Maybe they were waiting for the sun to go down. Can you see or hear the others?”
    “I can’t see my hand in front of my face. The last I saw, Miltiades and the dandy ran into a building over that way.”
    Rings eyed Jacob’s choice of direction. “Are you sure? I thought it was over there.”
    The fighter nodded. “I’m sure of it. I was looking right at them when darkness fell.”
    “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. Let’s get out of this damned dust.”
    Jacob glanced around once more to fix his bearings, then moved off into the murk, leaning into the wind. Rings followed, one hand resting on the fighter’s pack. They seemed to walk for a long time before they encountered a low, stone parapet that ran until it vanished in the gloom to either side.
    “This can’t be right,” Rings said. “The building we seek had a long colonnade and a big staircase in front of it.”
    “I think I saw this wall on the left side of the square. We need to follow it toward the right to get to the palace.”
    “I don’t remember any damned wall at all,” Rings snorted. “I think this is going to be a lot harder than we thought.”
    “Well, do you want to lead?” Jacob snapped. “At least I know when I’m lost. Try it your way; maybe you’re right after all.”
    Jacob looked left, then started along the wall toward the right, trailing his left hand along the old stone. Again, they seemed to walk a long time. The world ceased beyond the five or ten feet they could see around them, but Rings began to suspect that something or someone trailed them just out of sight, moving in and out of the corners of his perception like a half-remembered nightmare.
    “My eyes are beginning to play tricks on me,” the dwarf said, as quietly as he could over the roaring of the wind.
    “Mine, too,” Jacob said. He halted and moved a step from the wall, giving himself space to wield his two-handed sword. “Show yourselves!” he shouted in challenge. “Come on!”
    Rings automatically turned and put his back to the tall warrior, guarding his flank. At the fringe of his vision he saw them now, brown and withered figures that approached in fluttering tatters of cloth and flesh. They were long dead, of course, silent phantoms with cruel talons and eyes that burned like witch fire. Rings balanced his fighting axe in his right hand and crouched, ready to strike. “How many on your side?” he asked.
    “Enough,” Jacob answered. “And you?”
    “More than enough,” Rings answered. The first mummy reached him, clubbing its knotted fists down at his head. He twisted aside and took the corpse’s leg off at the knee with one swift stroke, then ducked under the swing of a rust-flaked sword that broke on the wall beside him. He hewed the ancient warrior’s arm from its body, then stumbled to the ground as the first one he’d felled tripped him with its grappling talons. Cold, bony claws raked deep into the flesh of his thigh, and Rings gagged in pain and revulsion. He smashed the creature’s skull with one blow of his axe and pried its talons from his leg while the next one advanced to attack. “Jacob!” he called.
    There was no reply. Rings staggered back a step, drove off the next dead one with a flurry of slashes, then risked a glance over his shoulder. Half a dozen of the ancient dead lay in the sand, hacked limb from limb, and in the swirling darkness he thought he saw a gleam of white movement as the Tyrian warrior danced and spun among the relentless horde, blade flashing. “Jacob! Stay close!” Rings shouted. Then he had to turn back to defend himself from an ancient priest-thing that attacked him