'You'd better have a new stool with you,' she said, as he backed hastily out the door, only now aware that she was still clutching the much-abused doll's head. She looked at it as soon as he was out of Sight. Whatever shape it had been in before this, it was ruined now.
She disgustedly tossed it into the discard bucket beside her bench.
It wasn't until she had a half dozen usable heads lined up on the bench in front of her, and had smashed the rejects, that she felt as if her temper was any cooler. Cleaning them was a dull but exacting task, precisely what she wanted at the moment. She didn't want to see or talk to anyone until her foul mood was gone.
So when she felt the stirring of air behind her that meant the door had cracked open again, she was not at all amused.
I'm going to kill him.
She readied a mental bolt, designed to hit him as if she had shouted in his ear-when her preliminary Mindtouch told her something completely unexpected. This was not Skif-or Kerowyn, or anyone else she knew.
And she ducked instinctively as something shot past, overhead, and landed with a solid thunk point-first in the wall above the bench.
A hunting knife, ordinary and untraceable. It quivered as she stared up at it, momentarily stunned. Then her training took over before the other could react to the fact that he had missed.
She kicked the stool at him as she rolled under the bench and came up on the other side. He kicked it out of the way, slammed the door shut behind him, and dropped the bar; a few heartbeats later, the door shuddered as Gwena hit it with her hooves.
Now I wish this place wasn't quite so sturdy-The stranger turned with another knife in his hands. Gwena shrieked and renewed her attack on the door. He ignored the pounding and came straight for Elspeth.
With her lesson so fresh in her mind, she flung the first thing that came to hand at him-the half-cleaned doll's head. It didn't do any damage, but it made a hollow popping sound which distracted him enough so that she could get clear of the bench, get to where he'd kicked the stool, and snatch it up. Using it as a combination of shield and lance, she rushed him, trying to pin him against the abused door with the legs.
But the battering the stool had taken had weakened the legs too much to hold; his single blow broke the legs from the seat and left her holding a useless piece of flat board. Or almost useless; she threw it at his head, forcing him to duck, and giving her a chance to grab something else as Gwena's hooves hit the door again.
That 'something else' proved to be one of her better pots, a lovely, graceful, two-handled vase. But she sacrificed it without a second thought, snatching it off the shelf and smashing it against the wall of the shed, leaving her with a razor-sharp shard. A knife-edge, with a handle to control it.
She took the initiative, as he started at the crash of shattering crockery, and threw herself at him.
He wasn't expecting that either, and she caught him completely off guard. He tried to grapple with her, and she let him, sacrificing her own mobility for one chance to get in with that bit of pottery in her right hand.
He grabbed her, but it was too late to stop her. Before he realized what she meant to do with that bit of crockery, she slashed it across his throat, cutting it from ear to ear, as Gwena's hooves hit the door and it shattered inward.
'Are you going to be all right?' Kerowyn asked, as she wiped Elspeth's forehead with a cold, damp cloth. Elspeth finally finished retching and licked her lips, tasting salt and bile, before she nodded shakily.
'I think so,' she replied, closing her eyes and leaning back against the outer wall of the shed. The others had arrived to find her on her hands and knees in the grass, covered in blood-not her own-with Gwena standing over her protectively as she emptied her stomach into the bushes.
Her stomach still felt queasy, as if she might have another bout at any moment. No matter that she had seen death before-had even killed her share of the enemy in the last war with Hardorn-she'd taken down Lord Orthallen with her own two hands and one of Skif's throwing nives. that wasn't close, not this close. I was dropping arrows into people from a distance. I threw a knife from across the room. Not like this, where he bled all over me and looked up at me and Her stomach heaved again, and she quelled the thoughts. 'Who was he?' she asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, trying to get her mind on something else. 'How did he find out where I was?
And how did he get past the guards?'
'I don't know the answers to your second and third questions,' Kero replied, as Elspeth closed her eyes and concentrated on the coolness against her forehead. 'But I can tell you the answer to the first. There's a spider-web brand on his palm. He's one of the followers of the Cold God. They hire themselves out as assassins, and they're very expensive because they don't care if they get caught. He was either providing a legacy for a family, or doing penance for some terrible sin. If you hadn't killed him, he'd have killed himself.' Kero dropped the cloth and sat back on her heels, and Elspeth opened her eyes and gaped at the older Herald, her nausea forgotten.