Tapp charged me from the middle of the room, knocking down one of his own men on the way. He was cursing, with his teeth bared and his sword held too high. I waited for him, prepared to cripple one of his legs and then slice his throat. When I killed Babardi, I had done just about the worst thing that anybody could do to Tapp, and if I let him live, then I’d just have to kill him another day. I could swear off murdering him of course, but I knew he wouldn’t stop trying to kill me. Mercy would be like driving a knife through my own neck.
I made a deep slice through Tapp’s upper leg. He screamed, stumbled, and then limped backward one step. I pressed him, and then I saw Leddie step out of the fight and aim her sword at Tapp’s back.
I shouted, “Stay away!” Tapp’s life was mine, and I’d be damned if I let her steal it.
Leddie laughed as she kept coming.
I grabbed Tapp’s collar and pushed his unbalanced self to the floor just as Leddie swung at his head. Then I knocked Leddie’s sword aside with a ridiculously furious block. She cocked her head, shrugged at me, and turned back to the main fight. I looked around for Tapp, and somebody shoved a white-hot spiny viper with barbs into my belly.
Tapp lay on the bloody rug, holding the hilt of his sword while jiggling the other end around in my guts. He withdrew for another thrust, maybe hoping for my testicles this time. I jumped up beside his head, screamed while my intestines rearranged themselves, and kicked Tapp in the face with my boot heel. That surprised me. I should have killed him, and I told myself to kill him. Right away. But when I turned, he wasn’t dead. He only lay passed out on the floor with a broken nose.
Four soldiers still blocked our escape toward the main doorway. I limped in and cut one down from the side. Leddie crippled a man, Whistler charged the door, and Bea tried to knee me in the crotch.
As I slipped aside, Bea shouted, “You . . . why, you crazy . . .”
Of course, she was ignorant of all my reasoning, so I nodded and said, “Wait,” before I hobbled on toward the door. Halla had hefted a puny soldier with one hand and had just slammed him against the ground when I arrived. I almost dropped my sword when she seized me with that same hand, hauled my face up to hers, and roared like a bear. She didn’t hold back on the flying slobber, either.
My spirit was hauled out of my body like a scrawny fish jerked out of the ocean. I hardly felt any nausea before nothingness wrapped me and dissolved all my pain.
“Murderer!” Harik bellowed.
I imagined drawing my sword, and the trading place appeared in bright afternoon sunlight.
“Murderer!” Harik shouted again, and my head rang all the way to my lower teeth. “Did you intend to accomplish anything more in your life? Experience anything else? Your answer should be no, because this is the end of you!”
My eyeballs seemed to be vibrating. Harik stood on the top step of the gazebo with his hair and black robe whipping in a hard breeze that I couldn’t feel. The god appeared even more well-muscled than usual.
“Greetings, Mighty Harik.” I tried to keep a casual tone, as if we were laughing over some foolish thing we’d done drinking yesterday. “It’s a shame you’re in poor spirits. I delivered the book like you asked.”
“I wanted that man to have the book!”
“You mean Lord Babardi?” I pointed at the ground with my sword, although the Gods’ Realm wasn’t physically above the world of man.
“I mean that fatuous lump of sinew and goose fat that you killed! Him! Not you!” Harik’s robe flapped wild, as if the wind had become a gale. “I did not intend for you to keep that book, you mewling speck!”
I winced and shook my head. “Damn, I’m sorry about that. I wish I had known. But I couldn’t have known if you didn’t say it, Your Magnificence. You always say I’m not too bright.”
“Do not try to be clever.” Harik spit each word like a nail.
“All right, I won’t. To make a good start on that, how do I keep this numbness from crawling up my arm and killing me?”
Harik’s nostrils flared twice, and then the wind died to a nice breeze. “You dare seek a favor from me? Now?”
“You did say not to be clever.”
Harik descended the gazebo benches with inhuman grace. He took one long, slow step onto the patch of dirt. I had never seen a god set foot on the dirt of the trading place. I didn’t move. The dirt patch was small, and I had nowhere to go. Also, my mind got stuck at asking whether this was really happening. I sure as hell didn’t raise my sword or try to kill the God of Death.
Harik placed the tip of his left thumb against my chest. I stopped breathing, my heart stopped beating, and I collapsed like a barrel of severed arms poured onto the coarse ground. All sensation disappeared as my sword dropped out of my hand. A moment later, it all came back when Harik wrapped my fingers around the hilt.
Harik was leaning over me. He squeezed my fingers tighter on the hilt, and pain rushed out of his thumb and into my chest. “I want you to feel this, Murderer.”
I couldn’t move even a fingertip, but I started shivering. Then my body began twitching as pieces of it died. An entire sun of pain flowed through my chest from Harik’s thumb.
Harik said, “The degree to which I deprecate your thoughts cannot be overestimated, but my unfathomable sense of
