Legends of the Riftwar (108 page)

Then the booted feet stopped and she turned to see her pursuers go hurtling face-forward on the floor. One gashed his left arm on his own sword as he fell, and howled as they floundered on the carpet. Behind them a dark cord lay across the
corridor. One end was tied to the leg of a heavy oak sideboard. A panel popped out of the wall, and four small figures emerged, throwing things–Flora caught the flash of a silver candlestick. Then pottery crashed, and she could smell the cooking oil in the jars.

Run!
she told herself: the children were already ducking back into the wall, and the mercenaries heaving themselves up. She did; careered off a wall, and then down a shorter corridor and down a flight of stairs.

 

‘This way!' Jarvis Coe cried, charging up a curling stairway.

‘Right behind you,' Jimmy panted. Running through a lord's house at night wasn't anything particularly new to him, but the feeling of tension behind his eyes was getting worse. ‘You can deal with this magician, I hope?'

‘I have bindings,' Coe replied. ‘Leave him to me.'

‘Oh, no argument.'

‘I can feel what he's doing. By the Goddess! There isn't much time.'

They ran down a long corridor and whisperings seemed to follow them. Now Jimmy could hear a voice rising, muffled as if by a door, but harsh and commanding, the words dropping like syllables of burning ash.

Oh, I really don't want to meet this man
, Jimmy thought, and kept running. Except for Alban Asher, every encounter with a magician recounted by members of the Mockers had ended badly–if anyone distrusted and feared magicians more than thieves, Jimmy couldn't imagine who they might be.

They turned right. A door stood a dozen feet in from the turning, and two men stood before it, swords drawn: a big dark man and a slight skinny one; they both moved forward a little.

Jarvis Coe didn't waste any time; he went straight at them in
a lunge, point extended. The big dark man beat the sword aside, then tried to kick Coe in the knee as the blades locked. Coe let the kick glance off the side of his leg, and rammed the big man in the pit of his stomach with his shoulder, throwing him back against the door and stumbling into the room beyond.

‘Hurry up!' a young man shouted from the room. ‘For the love of the gods, hurry up!'

Jimmy didn't bother to watch any more than that: the thin mercenary was coming at him, sword in his right hand, a long knife in the other, knife-hand advanced over the same foot. The young thief frantically tried to remember everything Prince Arutha had told him, all at once and without using words.

‘Skinny's gonna carve you up proper, me good son,' the scrawny mercenary said. ‘Come to poppa, yer little bastard, an' get a spankin'!'

‘Help!' the young man's voice in the room beyond shouted. Steel clashed in the room. ‘Get me out of this!'

Skinny made a walking thrust–stepping forward and lunging at the same time which gave him tremendous reach. Jimmy didn't try to back up: instead, he used his shorter stature to lift the other man's sword-thrust and went in under it, trying to run him through the throat. That didn't work: the rapier went up over the mercenary's shoulder, and the hilts locked. Jimmy twisted desperately as the dagger in the soldier's other hand stabbed, and then they were chest-to-chest, with the knife-arm trapped against Jimmy's side by his own.

Not good
, Jimmy thought, as he tried to knee the older man in the groin, and hit his thigh instead.
He's a lot stronger than I am
.

They circled for an instant, with breath nearly as bad as Foul ol' Ron's issuing from the mercenary, and then Jimmy managed to stamp downward and land his heel on the other man's instep. Skinny howled and pushed. Jimmy bounded backward–and
found himself inside the room beyond the door; they'd got turned completely around without his noticing.

The room was brighter than the corridor outside. Jimmy took the situation in with a single flashing glance even as he gave more ground and then lunged with a stop-thrust that nearly spitted the eager Skinny. He backed off in turn and they circled, Skinny on the outside, Jimmy turning on his back leg, left hand on hip, point presented from a turned wrist as the Prince had taught him.

There was a man in a rich coat and breeches standing with a curved knife above a naked young man–who must be Bram. Bram had a red line painted down his centre, shouted too. ‘Five thousand gold crowns if you can keep them off!' the man screamed. ‘Five thousand–a free pardon, and five thousand!'

Even then, Jimmy felt his eyes grow wider.
I could buy this manor house with five thousand.

Skinny thought the same. He bounced forward again, grinning even wider, and a trickle of saliva ran down from one corner of his mouth.

Through it all, the chanting ran like millstones grinding at the foundations of the world.

 

Flora turned a corner, and shrieked. Lorrie was at the other end of it, limping toward her–and the guard she'd stabbed in the leg was limping after Lorrie!

What to do, what to do?
Flora thought. Then she shouted, ‘Lorrie! Turn right at the door in the middle of the corridor!'

They sped toward each other, and the cries of the pursuers rose to a baying eagerness. The two girls almost collided; then they threw their shoulders against the door together, swung through, slammed it closed again.

The room was a sleeping chamber, with four double bunk beds, empty except for a clay lamp burning on a table and a
single wooden chair. Flora's eyes searched frantically. ‘Get me that chair! We can prop it against the door!'

Lorrie tried to dash for it, nearly fell as her leg buckled, grabbed the chair and came back dragging it. Flora was reaching for the chair as the door slammed open and together she and Lorrie tried to hold it closed, but the weight of the guardsmen threw them back with brutal force.

The door swung open, and two men crowded each other as they tried to push through at the same time. Flora staggered back until the table struck her buttocks. She threw her hands back on either side to keep from falling and splinters bit painfully at her palms. The men were raving: mouths spewing hate and frustration, their beards glistening with the flaxseed oil from the jars the children had thrown…

Flora's mind moved quickly, but everything else seemed very slow. She half-turned and picked up the clay lamp, careful not to douse the wick by grabbing it too hard. Then she took two steps forward and threw it, watching as it turned to spray the spirits of wine from its reservoir into the men's faces.

The oil caught at once: not a flare of flame like pine resin, but quick enough, the flames yellow and thick in their hair and beards. Both men seemed to dance in place, screaming as they beat at their own faces and the fire spread to the oil-soaked cloth and leather on their bodies. Flora stood stock-still, watching with wide eyes.

Lorrie took a step past her, stooped to lift one of the swords the men had dropped, grabbed it in a clumsy two-handed grip and swung it over and over again. Her aim was sure, though.

I suppose she's helped butcher a lot of pigs
, Flora thought.

The men went down, twitching and moaning. Lorrie stood panting, the bloody sword in her hand.

The last mercenary stood watching his friends burn, and the
sword dropped from his hand. His mouth worked as he backed away from the two women; then he turned to run.

His shins hit Kay's back at precisely the right height, and he catapulted forward and struck the flagstones with his face. From behind Kay, Mandy stepped forward, a poker in her hand; behind her Neesa came with a candlestick, and Rip with another, heavier one.

 

I'm getting tired of this
, Jimmy thought.

The twin points glittered as they moved. Skinny had a slight bleeding cut over one knee, but it just seemed to make him madder. ‘My gold,' he wheezed, as he came forward again.

‘I'll handle him,' Jarvis Coe said, stepping in beside him.

Skinny and Jimmy both glanced aside. Rox lay slumped against the wall, legs straight out in front of him, looking down as he clutched at his belly with both hands. Blood flowed out between his fingers.

‘You get the sacrifice free!' Coe barked. ‘Goddess, this is like trying to block four holes with one plug!'

Skinny screamed something and attacked; Jimmy skipped aside willingly.

It was a big room, and the one beyond it was even bigger. Jimmy needed six paces to reach the magician who stood at the foot of the table, hands raised. There was a crawling nimbus about him, more like darkness in a man's shape than anything else. He leapt forward in an immaculate long-lunge.

Can't chant with two feet of steel through his lungs
, he reasoned.

One of the upraised hands moved. Light exploded behind Jimmy's eyes, and he screamed in anguish.

 

‘No!' Bram howled, as the lad with the rapier staggered backward. ‘No, no, no!'

The old man raised his curved knife, and the magician chanted.
Bram could feel a wind blowing–a wind of rage, and suddenly of air as well. There was a rushing, a woman's scream that came from everywhere and nowhere.

‘Now!' the magician thundered. ‘Now! Strike!'

And the silk flew from Bram's face. He looked up into the wrinkled face of the man who would kill him, and snarled defiance.

The knife dropped, despite the magician's howls. ‘Zakry?' he whispered.

Who?
Bram wondered, suddenly shocked out of his fear and anger. He'd never seen such pain as that on the age-scored face above him: the man's features writhed, and tears trickled down the cheeks.

‘Zakry! Zakry's son. It was true! Elaine, you whore! You bitch!'

‘She's dead,' another voice sighed. ‘Oh, damnation. You waited too long.'

I am dead!

That rang through Bram's head like the tocsin of a great bronze bell. There was a figure standing before the lord now. He could hear its voice, not so loud, but echoing as if it made his bones vibrate in sympathy.

Seventeen years dying! Seventeen years, dying every minute. You killed me! You killed my Zakry, my darling, the father of my son! You tried to kill my child, too, but I stopped you, you monster!

‘Whore,' the old man wheezed. ‘Seventeen years I lived for nothing save to bring you back, and now I see Zakry told me the truth. You were his lover and this was his child! How I hate you!' He raised the dagger and struck at the insubstantial figure before him.

Its mouth gaped, emitting an endless dolorous wail that made Bram want to smash his own head against the stone table beneath him, if only that would stop it. The knife flashed again, and again.

 

Jimmy the Hand wheezed with a pain so great that he couldn't even scream. There was a scream going on, and it blew through him like a wind, like the agony of death stretched out to years. His vision had cleared a little, though, and he knew that he'd feel no more pain–or anything else, ever again–if he didn't move in the next moment.

There.
The glitter of steel. He turned and lunged.

The effort hurt, but it cleared his head. He saw Baron Bernarr dodge, leaping backward to avoid the point of the rapier. That took him nearly to the window.

The window had been made as an archer's position: the man-width slit at the outer edge of the wall had sloping sides on all edges of the inner, so that the bowman could shoot to either side. The sill caught at his heels and he toppled backward, the knife glittering as he dropped it so that it landed point-down in the floorboards. But that allowed him to grip the smooth slanted stone and hold himself there with the friction of his palms. Then he struggled to get a leg behind himself and push his body upright.

Something came between the Baron and Jimmy. Jimmy thought it was a woman, but his head was still hurting too much to be sure; and he also thought he could see the Baron through it.

It screamed, and Jimmy dropped his sword to clutch at his head. He saw the older man's hands fly up likewise, and the O of his mouth as he fell backward and out of the window with a long scream, smashing through the fragile, costly glass and tumbling away into the lightning-shot night.

‘Fifty feet down, onto stone,' Jimmy wheezed, bending and scrambling for the hilt of his rapier.

A huge weight seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders–or from the inside of his head. The night blew in through the shattered glass, and the black candles flickered out. Ten
feet away Skinny goggled at him, and then slipped backward. Blood spurted as he pulled his throat off the point of Jarvis Coe's sword.

A sigh cut through the silence.

The magician at Bram's feet shook his head, and tucked his hands into the sleeves of his robe. ‘It seems I must seek another patron for my…art,' he said, his voice whimsical and light. He raised his hand and suddenly he was gone.

Coe looked at the space the magician had occupied a moment before and swore. Jimmy didn't recognize the language, but the tone was unmistakable.

Behind him, Flora came into the room, supporting Lorrie; but the farmer's daughter shook herself free and hobbled toward Bram with her brother dancing behind her.

Bram raised his head and looked at all of them. ‘Will someone please cut me loose?' he asked plaintively. ‘And get me some breeches!'

 

Jimmy the Hand reined in and looked back down the road. There were enough people around the doors of the manor for the buzz of their voices to be audible even half a mile away. He shook his head ruefully and patted the hilt of the rapier slung at his saddlebow. ‘So much for minstrels,' he said, taking a deep breath of the cool spring air.

Gulls flew through the air above, reminding him of home with an ache whose pain surprised him.

He and Coe rode, while Flora drove the dog-cart. Lorrie had elected to stay with Bram and the children, who were going to travel to Land's End in an old wagon from the Baron's stable. They had taken enough time for Jimmy to explain to Flora who Coe really was, while hiding the truth from the others. Jimmy felt Flora needed to know the whole truth, but decided against mentioning Coe's real identity to Bram, Lorrie and the others.
He didn't know why, except it seemed the Mocker's way to keep things from outsiders.