Maybe they intend to abandon the city, he said to Saphira.

Would Galbatorix let them leave in the middle of a battle?

I doubt he wants to lose any of his spellcasters.

Maybe, but we should still tread with care. Who knows what they are planning?

Eragon shrugged. For now, the best thing we can do is help the Varden secure Feinster as quickly as possible.

She agreed and angled toward a skirmish in a nearby square.

Fighting in a city was different from fighting in the open, as Eragon and Saphira were accustomed to. The narrow streets and close-set buildings hampered Saphira’s movements and made it difficult to react when soldiers attacked, even though Eragon could sense the men approaching long before they arrived. Their encounters with the soldiers devolved into dark and desperate struggles, broken only by the occasional burst of fire or magic. More than once, Saphira wrecked the front of a house with a careless sweep of her tail. She and Eragon always managed to escape permanent injury—through a combination of luck, skill, and Eragon’s wards—but the attacks made them even more cautious and tense than they normally were in battle.

The fifth such confrontation left Eragon so enraged that when the soldiers began to withdraw, as they always did in the end, he gave chase, determined to kill every last one. They surprised him by swerving off the street and crashing through the barred door of a millinery shop.

Eragon followed, leaping over the cracked wreckage of the door. The inside of the shop was pitch-black and smelled like chicken feathers and stale perfume. He could have lit the shop with magic, but since he knew the soldiers were at a greater disadvantage than he was, he refrained. Eragon felt their minds nearby, and he could hear their ragged breathing, but he was uncertain of what lay between him and them. He inched deeper into the inky shop, feeling his way with his feet. He held his shield in front of him and Brisingr over his head, ready to strike.

Faint as a line of thread falling to the floor, Eragon heard an object flying through the air.

He jerked backward and staggered as a mace or a hammer struck his shield, breaking it into pieces. Shouts erupted. A man knocked over a chair or a table and something shattered against a wall. Eragon lashed out and felt Brisingr sink into flesh and bury itself in bone. A weight dragged on the end of his sword. Eragon yanked it free, and the man he had struck collapsed across his feet.

Eragon dared a glance back at Saphira, who was waiting for him in the narrow street outside. Only then did Eragon see that there was a lantern mounted on an iron post beside the street and that the light it cast rendered him visible to the soldiers. He quickly moved from the open doorway and threw away the remnants of his shield.

Another crash echoed through the shop, and there was a confusion of footsteps as the soldiers rushed out the back and up a flight of stairs. Eragon scrambled after them. The second story was the living quarters of the family who owned the store below. Several people screamed and a baby began to wail as Eragon bounded through a maze of small rooms, but he ignored them, intent as he was on his prey. At last he cornered the soldiers in a cramped sitting room illuminated by a single flickering candle.

Eragon slew the four soldiers with four strokes of his sword, wincing as their blood splattered him. He scavenged a new shield from one, then paused and studied the corpses. It seemed rude to leave them lying in the middle of the sitting room, so he threw them out a nearby window.

On his way back to the stairs, a figure stepped around a corner and stabbed a dagger toward Eragon’s ribs. The tip of the dagger stopped a fraction of an inch from Eragon’s side, halted by his wards. Startled, Eragon swept Brisingr upward and was about to strike his attacker’s head from his shoulders when he realized that the holder of the dagger was a thin boy of no more than thirteen.

Eragon froze. That could be me, he thought. I would have done the same if I were in his shoes. Looking past the boy, he saw a man and a woman standing in their nightgowns and knit caps, clutching each other and staring at him with horror.

A tremor ran through Eragon. He lowered Brisingr and, with his free hand, removed the dagger from the boy’s now-soft grip. “If I were you,” Eragon said, and the loudness of his voice shocked him, “I would not go outside until the battle is over.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m sorry.”

Feeling ashamed, he hurried from the shop and rejoined Saphira.

They continued along the street.

Not far from the millinery shop, Eragon and Saphira came across several of King Orrin’s men carrying gold candlesticks, silver plates and utensils, jewelry, and an assortment of furnishings out of a well-appointed mansion the men had broken into.

Eragon dashed a pile of rugs from the arms of one man. “Put these things back!” he shouted to the entire group. “We’re here to help these people, not steal from them! They are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers. I’ll let you off this once, but spread the word that if you or anyone else goes looting, I’ll have you strung up and whipped as the thieves you are!” Saphira growled, emphasizing his point. Under their watchful gaze, the chastened warriors returned the spoils to the marble-clad mansion.

Now, Eragon said to Saphira, maybe we can—

“Shadeslayer! Shadeslayer!” shouted a man, running toward them from deeper within the city. His arms and armor identified him as one of the Varden.

Eragon tightened his grip on Brisingr. “What?”

“We need your help, Shadeslayer. And yours too, Saphira!”

They followed the warrior through Feinster until they arrived at a large stone building. Several dozen Varden sat hunched behind a low wall in front of the building. They appeared relieved to see Eragon and Saphira.