That long hand and arm did not, I thought, belong to Inch.
Young Pando was a handful, I knew that well enough, and an imp of mischief, and it could well be that he had so upset a new guest in the inn that chastisement had been considered necessary. Yet I hurried inside, anxious that no real harm should come to the lad, and, if the truth be told, growing indignant that someone else other than his mother should lay hands on the child.
The noise of people in the main room drowned out any sounds of beating that might be coming from the upper floor. Quite a crowd had gathered already as the news and gossip of far-off places were detailed, and the merry sound of clinking glasses and the throaty exclamations of amazement accompanied me, along with the heady smells of wine and cooking food, up that narrow black-wood stair. As I reached the top I saw Tilda’s door slam shut.
I stopped at once, making a face to myself. No man with a pennyweight of brains interferes between a widow and her son in moments like these. But then — a stir of unease ghosted over me. That had not been Tilda’s slender and shapely ivory-skinned arm that had so roughly pulled Pando back, and I had not passed the owner of the offending arm on the stairs. Strange.
With a certain hesitation — an unfamiliar sensation for me — I moved quietly toward Tilda’s door. I listened. I heard nothing except a hoarse breathing, close up against the polished wood. I kept my own breathing steady and quiet.
Then a man yelped in sudden pain — as though, for instance, a woman had driven her bare toes agonizingly into his middle — and a woman’s voice rang out. Tilda’s voice.
“Help! Help! Murder!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I smashed the door open with a single kick and leaped into the room. These were no rapscallion leem- hunters out for a good time, unwilling to kill, ready for a bit of rough-and-tumble.
I knew this breed. These were killers. There were four of them. They were tall, lithe, poised men, all bronzed from the suns-light, muscular and predatory. Their rapiers and daggers were plain, workmanlike, efficient.
They wore dark clothing, plain tunics and well-oiled leathers, high black boots, and their broad-brimmed gray hats with the curling blue feathers cast shadows across their faces from which the gleam of their eyes in the suns- light through the windows struck leem-like.
One held Tilda around the waist and his dagger lifted above her ivory throat, poised to strike. Another stood holding his middle and retching — I did not smile — and the other two swung around to face me. Reasonable odds for the Lord of Strombor.
There was no time to consider. The dagger was about to plunge down into Tilda’s throat, and all Pando’s despairing yell as he struggled between the legs of the assassin would avail nothing. My rapier and dagger were in my hands. I threw the dagger. It flashed across the room like a streak of sunlight, buried itself in the neck above the squared tunic. The man gulped and dropped his own dagger. His knees buckled; but I could watch him no more for with a clang and a screech of steel the two assassins hurled themselves upon me.
Our blades met and parried and I had to dodge and skip for a few wild heartbeats as I avoided their attack, my left hand empty.
I spitted the first one in the guts, recovered, slashed savagely at the next and did not complete the stroke, leaping back so that he parried with his dagger against the empty air. I ran him through the heart, aiming delicately between the requisite rib members. As I withdrew, the meanness of these men showed itself in the last one’s actions — for, knowing he faced a master swordsman and knowing he faced thereby his own death — he turned and dived headlong through the window taking the glass and the framing with him in a great splintering crashing.
One spring took me to the wreck of the window. I looked down.
The assassin was picking himself up, his face still with a greenish hue from Tilda’s kick and blood on his face from the smashed glass.
Inch was walking up toward
I shouted, “Inch! If it is not against your taboos, kindly take that fellow into custody. Don’t treat him gently.”
“Oho!” said Inch, and ran in and planted a tremendous kick upon the assassin’s posterior as he attempted to stand up. I jumped out of the window, landed like a leem, grabbed the fellow by the tunic, and hit him savagely on the nose. Blood spurted. I did not knock him out.
“Talk, you rast! Or I’ll spit your liver and roast it!”
He gabbled something, something about Marsilus, and gold, and then blood poured from his mouth and he collapsed.
Inch looked offended.
“I did not kick him hard enough for that, Dray. Nor would your blow upon the nose have hurt a fly -
So why is he dead?”
I was annoyed.
“He must have smashed his guts up jumping through the window and falling awkwardly. By the disgusting nostrils of Makki-Grodno! The fellow is dead and that’s an end to it.”
We left him there to be collected by the mobiles of Pa Mejab, who were later fully satisfied with our explanation of four dead men, and went back to Tilda and Pando.
The assassin I had first run through was in the act of dying as we entered the room. There was nothing to be discovered. Pando collected four rapiers and four daggers, which I was pleased to sell later for good silver dhems, and Inch took the best of the leather boots which fitted him, for his feet were inordinately long and thin. I had a pair, also; as an addition to my wardrobe, just in case. Two of the broad-brimmed hats, also, with their curled blue feathers, might come in useful. The tunics would not fit either Inch or me
— I was too wide in the shoulder and Inch too narrow — so we sold the rest of the gear.
“If they have any friends come asking for them,” I said to Nath, the innkeeper, “then let us know, by Zim- Zair, and we will wring the truth from them.”
But no one else bothered us thereafter on the score of the four assassins while we were in Pa Mejab.
“They swaggered in and demanded to know if the actress Tilda and her son Pando lodged here,” said old Nath, mightily shaken up by the event. He kept a respectable house, as, indeed, he must, otherwise Tilda would not have lodged and performed there. These goings-on were not to his liking. They might be common in
Not one of the four dead men yielded any personal identification to prying fingers. Apart from money and the usual items to be found in the pockets and gear of any man they were devoid of information. Inch wondered if we might make a few discreet inquiries among the ships; but Tilda, rather alarmed, vetoed this idea at once.
Looking at her, I caught the impression that perhaps she knew more about this business than she was prepared to discuss with us. After all, Inch and I were strangers. A considerable number of people had taken lodgings with old Nath and he had let all his rooms. The main room was crowded that evening. Tilda had insisted that she was perfectly all right and could go on. Old Nath, gallantly protesting that she should rest up after her ordeal, visibly showed his relief that she would give her performance, whose fame accounted for his vastly increased trade and profits. But I do not condemn him for that; he was good to me as well as others.
When Tilda made her final exit to rapturous applause that thundered to the rafters and set all the glass wine cups on the shelves ajingling, she came over to my table as was her custom. Old Nath did not mind me occupying a table just so long as I paid for what I consumed in the same way as an ordinary customer. Most often I did not bother, saving my scraped wealth, but this night was different. Just as we were preparing to listen to the beginning of Tilda’s impassioned rendition of the execution scene from the music drama — not quite the same thing as an opera — known over most of Kregen as
