Tali was staring at the corpse when Orlyk sat upright, blood pouring from the chest wound. She was swaying, white-faced and clearly not fully recovered from the hallucinogenic water, but she raised a small brass triangle in one hand and a knife in the other.
Rix tried to change direction but skidded on the gravel, aggravating the sore ankle he had twisted in the caverns. He snatched at the knife on his belt, knowing he could not draw and throw it in time.
Orlyk struck the triangle with her knife,
The pothecky was still on her knees. She had broken off the arrow in her shoulder and now swung the glass tube in Tobry’s direction. It had to be some deadly chymical weapon, one neither of them could combat, and for the first time in a fight Rix didn’t know what to do — whether to try and save Tali, or his best friend.
He could not do both, and if he didn’t act fast they were both going to die. He flung his knife at the pothecky but she calmly wove aside. The glass tube was aimed at Tobry again, the pothecky put her lips to the end, and
Tobry bellowed and fell, creating a miniature landslide. From the corner of an eye Rix saw him carried down with it. A deeper pain sheared through him and for a second he lost concentration. No — between Tobry and Tali there was no choice at all.
Rix was turning to run back when the glass tube fixed on his own chest. He felt no impact, though when he looked down a tiny, hollow-tipped dart was embedded beside his breastbone. In an instant his heart caught alight. He tried to knock the dart out but the blow squirted more of its chymical contents into him, belling out the skin all around.
His heartbeat accelerated to a gallop, spreading fiery pain in all directions. He could feel it rising up the arteries in his throat, burning like boiling acid, and when the blood reached his brain it was going to stew inside his skull.
He reached for the dart. At least, he tried to, but his arm did not move.
‘Tobe?’ he gasped, and was horrified to see steam gush from his own mouth. ‘Tobe?’
It felt as though he was boiling from the inside out. Rix managed to lurch around. Tobry lay on the rubble slope twenty yards away, unmoving. Dead?
As Rix soon would be. And, oddly, all he could think was how furious Lady Ricinus would be, and how badly he had let her down. He had failed his house, neglected to provide it with an heir, and when his father died House Ricinus would be no more.
He felt himself falling sideways and could do nothing about it. He hit the ground but felt no pain. His field of view tilted until the pothecky appeared to be standing out from the vertical face of a cliff. She advanced towards Rix, the broken arrow still quivering in her shoulder, thumbing another dart into the tube and aiming it at his right eye.
CHAPTER 49
Orlyk fell with an arrow in her chest, then Mijl was struck, and a third arrow whistled between Tali and Tinyhead. Before she could move, the tall guard spun her around and jerked her head back to expose her throat. Her hands were still bound and she could not help herself.
Whack! The guard’s knife spun past her ear — Tinyhead had kicked it out of his hand. Another kick to the groin dropped the man. Tinyhead grabbed Tali, raced for the boulders, dropped her on her feet, one giant paw crushing her shoulder, and peered around the side.
Tali doubled over, shuddering. It had been so close. But she had to get free. She rasped at her bonds with the brass pin that had pinned her father’s letter in place. She had been working on the ropes for an hour; and now the last strands tore through. She could not see the attackers through the claggy smoke. What if they thought she was Cythonian and shot her too?
A big man came charging towards her, running so fast down the rubbly slope that he was likely to break his neck. Tali caught her breath; it was Rix, carrying a bow, and behind him was Tobry, sword in hand. She had been wrong about them. They were risking their lives for her.
Mijl rose from the smoke, swinging the glass tube towards Tali. Mijl’s middle and thighs were blood- drenched and a broken arrow protruded from her belly muscles, yet her hand was steady. Tinyhead had not noticed and his grip prevented Tali from ducking out of sight.
Mijl took aim. Tali was staring at the round opening in the end of the tube, unable to move, when the pothecky let out a pained grunt. Another arrow had gone through her upper arm, pinning it to the side of her chest. She tried to raise the tube, then it wavered and she fell down through the smoke.
Tinyhead caught Tali up but this time she was ready. She slashed him across the forehead with the brass pin, beads of blood bursting from the deep scratch, then back across the nose and cheek. He was so shocked that he dropped her. She bounced on her bruised bottom, scrambled up and, as he lunged, she thrust out the pin to hold him off.
Tinyhead flicked blood out of his eyes and reached for her. With Nurse Bet’s lessons guiding her hand, Tali slashed and the pin tore through his fingertips. He took a backwards step, raising his arms skywards and silently beseeching his master. She pushed forwards. A chymical dart whirred past her cheek and struck him in the left shoulder. He plucked it out, stared at the fluid dripping from its hollow tip for several seconds, then crumbled.
Tali backed away, turned and cried out. Rix was flying through the air, straight towards one of the guard’s spears — he was going to impale himself through the chest. But then, with a mid-air dexterity beyond her imagination, he hacked the spear shaft in two and killed the man with a kick to the jaw.
‘Tali, behind you!’
The warning came almost too late. Only instinct got her out of the way and she felt the wind of the tall guard’s sword blow, the tug as it sliced through her baggy robes. She scrambled away, snatching a handful of dirt and tossing it at his eyes. He kept coming, slashing across and back, aiming to kill.
With a sickening crunch, a sword came out through the left wall of his chest and he died on his feet. It had gone right through him. She was staring at the impaled corpse when Orlyk sat up, struck a triangle,
Tali tried to heave Rix’s sword out of the man’s back, but it was jammed through the ribs. She grabbed a stone and hurled it at Orlyk. It missed, and so did the next; throwing stones was not an art Tali had ever practised. Orlyk was almost on her when her third stone struck the arrow wound in the squat woman’s upper chest. She dropped like a boulder, convulsing again, and the bracelet began to cool.
The smoke billowed high, drifted low. All was a chaos of screams and shouts, blows and counter-blows. Tali kept turning and turning, squinting through the eye-stinging smoke, never sure which direction the next attack was coming from but always knowing that the enemy was determined to cut her throat.
She could not have said whom she fought or what was the result, but suddenly everyone was down save the pothecky, who had dropped Rix and Tobry with chymical darts and was thumbing another into her tube. Tobry lay thirty yards away up the slope, unmoving. Steam gushed from Rix’s mouth and he was making inarticulate grunts. His red face looked as though it was about to burst.
The pothecky turned on Tali, who took careful aim with a jagged chunk of red stone, and flung it. This time it went true, thudding into the pothecky’s forehead. Her arms flailed, she fell to her knees on rock and Tali heard an unpleasant crack, as if a kneecap had broken.
She was drenched in sweat, staggering from exhaustion, and every movement aggravated her blistered ankle, but Tinyhead was lurking somewhere, and Mijl and Orlyk were still alive.
The sensible thing was to kill them while they were helpless but that was too cold-blooded for Tali. She limped to Rix and put a hand on his face. He was almost too hot to touch — he seemed to be burning from the
