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softly.
    “Here,” Vaaler said, offering his weapon to the barbarian. “Take my sword.”
    Norr shook his head. “I have not earned the right.”
    “He never carries a weapon,” Scythe explained.
    “I wouldn’t know how to use it, anyway,” Norr added. “I will fare better with my bare hands.”
    “Here they come,” Keegan said, pointing with Rexol’s staff to the base of the hill.
    The Inquisitors were already starting up the path, moving with alarming speed. They had pulled back the hoods of their heavy brown cloaks to reveal their shaved heads, and each was armed with a black, six-foot quarterstaff. With their gray, pupil-less eyes and hairless skulls, it was hard to visually distinguish between male and female, but Jerrod’s second sight told him there were four men and two women in the group.
    “Get ready, Norr,” Jerrod said. “The rest of you fall back.”
    Keegan and Vaaler did as ordered. Scythe hesitated a moment, then followed the others as they retreated to a safe distance.
    Jerrod focused his mind and prepared for battle. He called on his internal reservoir of Chaos to bolster his strength, speed, and stamina. But instead of the surge of power he normally felt, he was rewarded with only a faint trickle of energy.
    The Inquisitors continued their ascent, silent and menacing. They paused about fifteen feet from the top of the plateau, just before the path narrowed. One of the men stepped forward to address them.
    “Jerrod: Yasmin the Unbowed has declared you and your companions as heretics of the Order. You have been condemned to death. We are here to carry out your sentence.”
    The renegade monk didn’t recognize the speaker: he was young, a fresh face who must have risen to his position during the years Jerrod was in hiding.
    “How are we condemned with no trial?” he countered, hoping to sow the seeds of doubt in his enemies. “Now that Yasmin is the Pontiff, has she abandoned the ancient laws of the Monastery?”
    “The old ways have failed.” the monk replied. “The Monastery is in ruins. Now is the time for righteous action!”
    Why are the young always so much more zealous in their fanaticism?
Jerrod wondered. And then the Inquisitors fell on them.
    As he’d hoped, only two of the Inquisitors were able to press forward while the rest were forced to hang back. Jerrod and Norr stepped forward to meet them, and everything became a blur.
    The staves of the Inquisitors whirled and spun, lashing out with quick, hard strikes. Jerrod countered by dodging or redirecting each attack with a hand or forearm and trying to get in close to unleash a volley of kicks, elbows, and knees. His opponent countered by twisting away, jabbing out with the butt of his quarterstaff to throw Jerrod off balance and forcing him to stumble back. The extra space allowed the Inquisitor to reset and make another pass with the spinning staff, and once again Jerrod responded with a series of parries and blocks that flowed into another series of counterattacks.
    The Inquisitor staggered back, and for a brief instant there was an opening for Jerrod to deal a crippling blow. But he was a fraction of a second too slow to seize the opportunity, and instead ofdriving his foot through the knee of his enemy and dislocating it, he only managed to deal a painful kick to the shin.
    Jerrod was fighting in a fugue. He felt slow and sluggish. His attacks lacked precision, and his defense seemed haphazard and careless. Even his awareness of what was going on around him felt muddled and cloudy.
    Fortunately, the Inquisitors were as slow and sluggish as Jerrod. It blunted their fury and prolonged what should have been a quick victory.
    Beside him, Jerrod was dimly aware of Norr struggling but somehow holding his own against an overwhelming foe. Too big and too slow to avoid the monk’s quarterstaff, Norr absorbed the full force of the punishing strikes with his meaty arms and shoulders, grunting in pain with each hit. But he refused