Shield's Lady

the two men came down the hall.
    The first man who spoke sounded disgruntled and a little scared.
    “He’s crazy I tell you,” the man complained to his companion. “We should have known better than to make a deal with a Shield. All that talk of making our fortunes with prisma was just to get us to work harder for him. I don’t think he ever intends to neutralize the stuff. He’s going to continue fooling around with that live crystal.”
    “He’ll kill us all in the process,” the other man said bluntly. “So what do we do?”
    “We can take him,” the first man said softly. “He’s good, I’ll grant you that, but there’s three of us and one of him. We’ll have to get hold of Miscroft and explain just what’s going on. Targyn can’t use that crazy mind business on us because we’re not Shields. It’s just a case of three fighting men against one. We can handle those odds.”
    “Whatever we do it had better be quick. Since that other Shield arrived Targyn’s been acting crazier than ever. He says he’s going to prime the prisma, whatever that means.”
    “Let’s find Miscroft. We’ll make our move now. I think you’re right. Targyn’s mind is going fast and there’s no telling what he’ll do next.”
    Gryph listened to the conversation and decided there was an element of rationality to it. If the three bandits turned on Targyn they might just possibly take him. If they didn’t succeed in that, they could at least distract him long enough for Gryph to do something permanent about Targyn’s future. He lowered the arm he had raised in preparation for hurling the lock at a bandit head.
    There was an old Shield saying to the effect that a little strategy went farther in the long run than a great deal of indiscriminate bandit bashing.
    Unfortunately, strategy had its limitations. Even as Gryph made the decision to let the bandits pass down the corridor, he heard their choked yells.
    “Targyn!” The first one sounded shaken. “Hey, wait a minute. What’s the matter with you? We were only going to—”
    A faint whooshing noise filled the corridor, followed by a gargled scream. Gryph recognized both sounds. The first was the deadly vibration of a throwing disk. The second was the sound of death. Scratch one bandit as a potential ally.
    Gryph heard the panicked, scrambling noises the second man was making as he tried to fire a blade bow. He got off one wild shot, but the next moment he too fell with an unmistakable thud.
    This was as much of a distraction as he was likely to get, Gryph decided. He had to move now while Targyn was still resonating with the satisfaction of his kills. This was the point at which a hunter was most vulnerable.
    Gryph pinpointed Targyn’s position in the corridor as best he could based on the length of time it had taken for the hurled throwing blades to cut down the two bandits.
    He launched himself out into the hall. A part of him objectively noted that he had approximated Targyn’s position quite accurately. The other Shield stood a few meters away, facing Gryph. His burning eyes were surveying his victims who lay on the floor in widening pools of blood. In his hand he held a third throwing blade. Targyn was well-trained. He left little to chance.
    Gryph sent the heavy metal lock hurling toward Targyn along a trajectory that would have caught the other man in the throat if all had gone well.
    But it didn’t. Targyn saw the flicker of movement an instant before Gryph appeared in the corridor. He reacted to it instinctively, throwing his lethal blade even as he whipped himself to one side.
    The lock struck Targyn’s shoulder instead of his throat. Targyn’s blade whooshed down the corridor toward Gryph, who was no longer occupying the middle of it. It missed its target by scant centimeters.
    As soon as he had launched his own poor weapon, Gryph had followed it toward its goal. He leaped the bodies of the bandits in the process and closed the gap between himself and Targyn swiftly. He had to reach the other Shield before Targyn could rearm himself.
    But Targyn made no move to pull another weapon from his kit. Instead he slapped his fingers over the prisma lock. A deathly grin stretched his lips and an unnatural glitter lit his eyes.
    Gryph sensed the mental blast of light a fraction of a second before it hit him. That small warning saved his life, but the blow stopped him cold. He went down beneath it as surely as if Targyn had struck him with a