devastatingly contemptuous. And here I was, at last beginning to warm up, freed from talk and intrigue and into the business of bashing skulls, and taking that evil joy from it that sometimes overcomes me — to my shame. But — but! If they realized I could handle a sword that would make life far more hazardous in the future. And it was to the future that all my efforts had been directed. All this talk, and inanity, and inaction — all had been designed to give me breathing space in Vallia. I did not wish to take on the work I had to do with a gang of cutthroat stikitches dogging my heels all the time. If I slew all these, there would be more. .
The very correctness of my estimation of the situation was borne out as Nath and Laygon charged on.
“It is true!” bellowed Laygon in his rich voice. “We had a report from our spies. The twelve who were slain and of whom you boast, you rast, were killed by your friends. You did not even draw your blade.”
That was true.
“Stand and die like a man,” grated Nath the Knife, and started to work his way around to my back.
“I have had luck with the knife,” I said. I ran backwards, casting a single quick look to see where I was going, aiming for the sacking-covered window. “But you are hyr stikitches — good at your foul work. But, you cramphs, you will not get my gold.”
I was at the window.
I spun about, bracing myself.
“Nor my hide!”
And with a single leem-leap I went head-first through the window.
All this idle chatter as I fought — I was really lapsing into some fairy-tale layabout, all silks and graces, quite unlike the hard and vicious and totally practical fighting man I am. . Rain lashed at me as I fell. I went head over heels. I had thought to land on my feet, and back, rolling, and so come up ready to fight.
Instead as I sailed from the window I turned over and fell splat into the back of an overfilled dung cart. Muck pulsed up around me. The stink sizzled. I scrabbled around in heaving nausea, sloshing about in the odoriferous and sticky collections of a hundred cesspits and stables. Shades of Seg and his dungy straw!
I flailed my arms and heard the squishings and squelchings.
The man on the cart yelled as the brown spray hit him.
I got a knee onto the rotten wood of the cart and heaved up.
Above my head three faces peered out of the shredded sacking. The woman’s face was, like them all, hidden by the steel mask; but I fancied she was whiter than usual. I hoped so. The cart lurched and I managed to slide off the back.
Nath let out a yell.
“Seize him up! Tally ho! Stikitches!
The rain slicked across the cobbles. The smell rose despite the rain. The cart lumbered off. Men and women appeared in the shadowed doorways of the street. I was around the corner from the front entrance of The Ball and Chain, and if I went that way Barty would come prancing out of the door of The Yellow Rose ready to fight and ready to be chopped.
So I ran the other way and, by all the confounded imps of Sicce, here came Barty, red-faced, bellowing, running after me with his rapier naked in his fist. By Zim-Zair! I groaned. Now we’re in for it!
“I am with you pri — Jak!”
“Well, stay with me!”
The three steel masks vanished from the window. A few men pushed out into the rain. In a few murs we’d be surrounded. Once the hue and cry was up we’d have all kinds of rascals out for a bit of fun and bashing running after us besides the assassins.
“This way, Barty. And put that damned sword away! Run!”
We pelted off through the rain heading away from the Gate of Skulls, along the side street parallel to the walls. The walls of the Old City of Vondium are mostly noticeable by their great age and their state of disrepair. But, for all that, they demarcate a very real line, a barrier between the Old and the New. People stared after us. The rain was a blessing in one way, in that it had driven a considerable number of idlers into shelter and so we had a pretty clear run. But, in the other way, and a worse way, too, it meant there were far fewer crowds in which to become lost. So — we ran.
I, Dray Prescot, ran.
I told myself that I ran because of Barty. I did not want him killed. I had never yet met my daughter Dayra to talk to her and I did not want our first meeting to be shadowed by the death of her fine young man who ran puffing and red-faced at my side. But Barty was young and tough and filled with ideas of chivalry and valor.
“Let us turn on them and rend them!” he panted out.
“Run.”
We cut along the first cross street aiming to get back to the walls and find a loophole out. I had no real idea of the geography of Drak’s City — I doubt if anyone had much idea of that crawling maze of streets and alleys and hidden courts as an entirety — and so could do no more than run and follow my nose. It would be nice if Ashti and her brother Naghan turned up and out of gratitude for the silver sinvers guided us to safety. But, again, that was out of fairy books.
The reality came as a dozen men sprang from an alleyway and brandishing long-knives and cudgels and a sword or two came blustering down on us.
Very carefully I gave my palms a good wipe down the old blanket coat — on the inside. The muck fouled me abominably. But I needed fists that would not slip on hilts for the work that promised. As though Five-handed Eos- Bakchi decided it was time to smile — just a little — upon me, I spotted an abandoned orange-like fruit called a rosha lying in the water-streaming gutter. A single twist ripped it into half and I smeared the tacky juice over my palms and fingers. That would help to give a good grip. It smelled a little better than I did, too. “We cut through them in one go and keep running,” I told Barty. When they hit us I did just that. I used the hilt a good deal, for I had no wish to kill these fellows. One or two blades flickered around my ears; but with a bash and a whump or two I was through. I poised to run on. I was through — but not so Barty.
He pranced. He took up the stance. His rapier leaned into a perfect line. He foined. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. Like a student fresh from the salle he handled himself with all the perfection of a star pupil. I sighed.
Many a time have I seen these fine young men fresh from sword-training go into rough and brutal action. If they live they learn and then stand a better chance. But all the universities in two worlds don’t teach what a man must know to keep a knife from his guts, a knee out of his groin, a flung chain from around his neck.
They’d have had Barty — had him for breakfast and spat out the pips. Perfect in poise and lunge and parry, holding himself in the correct rapier-fighting position, he would have been easy meat for them. He was lucky — that I own — when a flung cudgel merely brushed past his brown hair. But he couldn’t last.
So I went bashing back most evilly, with a knee here, and a clutch at a raggedy coat here and a jerk and a chunk of the hilt, and a bending-forward so that the attacker went sailing up over me, to be kicked heartily as he hit the ground.
No, if you want to stay alive on many spots of Kregen you do no good trying to fence by the book. A stout- armed fellow with a kutcherer tried to stab the spiked back of the knife into my eye, and I weaved and kicked him between wind and water, and ducked a cudgel from his mate and elbowed his Adam’s apple. My own rapier and main gauche flew this way and that parrying blows and thrusts. I jumped about a fair bit. I got up to Barty and put my foot into the rear end of the man who was going to slip a long knife into Barty’s exposed back and kicked him end-over-end. I had to beat away another kutcherer, careful of that wicked tooth of metal.
Barty had allowed a ruffian to get inside his guard, and with his rapier pointing at the rain-filled skies was dancing around as though the two of them waltzed, neither able to step back to take a slash at the other.
“Barty,” I said, in what I considered a most understanding voice. But Barty jumped, anyway. “Let us get on.”
I stuck the main gauche back into my belt, ignoring the scabbard, took the fellow clasping Barty by the ear, ducked a cudgel blow from somewhere, and ran him across the street. He tried to emulate a swifter and rammed head-on into a moldy wall.
I grabbed Barty.
“And this time, young man, do not stop running!”
We took off. They followed for a bit; but I caught a hurtling cudgel out of the air and threw it back. The man
