Kerowyn's Ride

Kero had no time to think. Training took over as wit failed.

“This’s no dance lesson, girl!” She could hear the armsmaster’s bellow in the back of her mind even as she slashed for the man’s unprotected eyes. “This’s fightin’ o’ th’ dirtiest—y’ hit yer man now an’ hit ‘im so’s ‘e knows ‘e’s friggin ‘-well been hit!”

Armsmaster Dent could have been dismissed for teaching Kero anything besides archery, and well he knew it. He’d done his best to discourage her when she presented herself beside Lordan for training. It was only when he caught her clumsily trying blows against the pells with a practice blade too long and heavy for her, and realized that Rathgar would assume he’d been training Kero anyway if her father ever found her out there himself, that he made a bargain with her.

In return for a reluctant promise never to touch a longer weapon, he promised to teach her knife-fighting. He hadn’t been happy about it, but Kero had made it very clear that it was the only way to keep her out of the armory and the practice ground.

Knife-work was, as Dent put it, the dirtiest, lowest form of combat, and figuring that if she ever really needed that training, it would be a case of desperation, he had taught her every trick he’d learned in a lifetime of street scuffling.

By some miracle, knife-work was also the only form of combat suited for the close confines of the kitchen doorway; the only kind of situation where a knife-fighter would be at an advantage against a swordsman. In the back of her mind, Kero thanked whatever deity had inspired that bargain with Dent, and slashed again at the man’s face when he evaded the wicked edge of her blade with a startled oath.

He reached for his own weapon, hampered by the wall at his side and the stairs at his back, further hampered when the quillons caught on his ill-kept armor.

Then she was no longer alone; Cook and Wendar were beside her, Cook armed with a spit as long as her arm in one hand and a cleaver in the other, and Wendar (with a pot over his bald head like an oddly-shaped helm) with the even longer spit used when they roasted whole pigs and calves. Cook stabbed at him with the wicked point of the spit and the man dodged away, moving into Wendar’s reach. Wendar brought the heavy, cast-iron rod down on the man’s head, and caved his helm in completely. The brigand fell backward, but another took his place.

Now there were more men piling down the staircase; how many, Kero couldn’t tell. One of them dragged the first out of the way, and the man on the stairs pulled him into darkness.

But the three defenders had the doorway blocked against all comers, with Kero going low, Wendar, high, and the Cook holding the middle and protecting them both with Kero’s pot lid. Then one of the young squires began lobbing ladles of hot turnips over their heads and into the faces of their opponents, using the ladle like a catapult. The stairs were already slippery; that made them worse, and no one fights well with scalding vegetables being flung in his eyes.

The invaders slashed and stabbed, but with caution. More of the servants took heart; at least Kero assumed they did, because suddenly the doorway was abristle with knives and pokers to either side of her.

At that, the bandits pulled back, retreating up the staircase, slipping and sliding on the stones. It looked to Kero as if more than one of them was marked and burned or bleeding.

It was as if she stood outside of herself, a casual observer. Her heart was pounding in her ears, yet she felt strangely calm. A cluster of three of the raiders stood just out of turnip-reach halfway down the staircase, staring down at the defenders of the kitchen. It was rather hard to see them; the press of bodies in the doorway blocked the light coming from the kitchen, and they themselves blotted out most of the light from above. Kero wished she could see their faces, and shifted uneasily from her right foot to her left.

If they get a log from upstairs and rush us with it, they could break through us, she realized. Agnira, please, don’t let them think of that—

The men seemed to be arguing among themselves. Kero squinted against the darkness and strained her ears, but could hear nothing but the screaming from the hall beyond. One of them gestured angrily in Kero’s direction, but the other two shook their heads, then pulled at his arm.

The argumentative one shook the other man’s hand off and started down the staircase. He was big, and very well armored, with a heavy wooden shield. Kero shuddered as she realized that he could rush them behind that shield, and give his comrades the chance to get by the bottleneck of the doorway. It looked as if he had figured that out, too.

But someone behind Wendar threw a carving knife at him. It was a lucky shot—it thunked point-first into the man’s buckler, buried itself in the wood, and remained there, quivering.

The brigand started, stumbling backward up one step, and swore an unintelligible oath. And he gave in to the urgings of his companions, following them back up the staircase, leaving the kitchen to its defenders.

Now it was Wendar’s turn to curse and attempt to follow. Panic seized her throat as she realized what he was trying to do.