significant groove across his left cheek, and he could feel the blood trickling down into his beard. The screaming continued outside the window, and out of the corner of his eye, the ranger saw O'Cuire leap for the casement.
      The girl had managed to grasp one hand to the window's ledge, but was swinging the other wildly around, all the while voicing great shrieks that would soon (if they had not already) awaken everyone in the keep (if not in all of Bavaria) to their presence. She stopped for a breath, swallowed dryly, and felt tears rolling down her cheeks. Then her precarious grip failed and gave way. She screamed again and plunged into Death's open embrace.
      Longshanks, driven to one knee by the hound's weight, fell back onto the landing's stone floor, taking the dog with him. Planting a foot into the beast's belly, he rolled back over one shoulder and, kicking, propelled the beast down the staircase.
      Knocked aside by the guardian hound's rabid rush, O'Cuire looked up just in time to see the girl's fingers clutching desperately the

 
 
stone window frame. Leaping to his feet, he reached the window only to see those fingers, blood trailing from the nails, slip free.
      "Saints, no!!" he cried, throwing himself out after her.
      As a judgment of Fate, or owing to some saint who blessed such actions, or perhaps it was Lady Luck, who chose to blow a kiss to a swashbuckler who had spent his life courting her, whatever the rationale, O'Cuire knew not. And yet, somehow, he had managed to catch the falling girl's wrist. With a bone-numbing jerk that almost separated his shoulder from its socket, he halted her descent, and robbed the Grim Reaper once again. Or so he thought. Wavesof pain rippled along his arm. Then, he too, felt the girl's fingers slipping from his own.

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