Lorrie did, half-noticing that Flora had taken the other arm of the T, and that the two swordsmen were after her—and not catching up, from their swearing. She ran as fast as she could, gasping every time her left foot hit the ground. The mercenary behind her was calling out a mixture of threats and obscenity. A brief glimpse behind showed he was limping nearly as badly as her.
Race of the cripples, she thought, almost grinning.
This is like being Hotfingers Flora again, she thought as she ran down the corridor, glancing from side to side for places to hide. But I can’t keep this up. Booted feet pounded behind her. They know the building; I don’t. They’ll trap me. Breath was harsh in her throat, and she could feel the acid taste of fear. I could be back in Land’s End, eating blueberry tarts and cream with Aunt Cleora!
Then the booted feet stopped and she turned to see her pursuers go hurtling face-forward on the floor. One gashed his left arm on his own sword as he fell, and howled as they floundered on the carpet. Behind them a dark cord lay across the corridor. One end was tied to the leg of a heavy oak sideboard. A panel popped out of the wall, and four small figures emerged, throwing things—Flora caught the flash of a silver candlestick. Then pottery crashed, and she could smell the cooking oil in the jars.
Run! she told herself: the children were already ducking back into the wall, and the mercenaries heaving themselves up. She did; careered off a wall, and then down a shorter corridor and down a flight of stairs.
‘This way!’ Jarvis Coe cried, charging up a curling stairway.
‘Right behind you,’ Jimmy panted. Running through a lord’s house at night wasn’t anything particularly new to him, but the feeling of tension behind his eyes was getting worse. ‘You can deal with this magician, I hope?’
‘I have bindings,’ Coe replied. ‘Leave him to me.’
‘Oh, no argument.’
‘I can feel what he’s doing. By the Goddess! There isn’t much time.’
They ran down a long corridor and whisperings seemed to follow them. Now Jimmy could hear a voice rising, muffled as if by a door, but harsh and commanding, the words dropping like syllables of burning ash.
Oh, I really don’t want to meet this man, Jimmy thought, and kept running. Except for Alban Asher, every encounter with a magician recounted by members of the Mockers had ended badly—if anyone distrusted and feared magicians more than thieves, Jimmy couldn’t imagine who they might be.
They turned right. A door stood a dozen feet in from the turning, and two men stood before it, swords drawn: a big dark man and a slight skinny one; they both moved forward a little.
Jarvis Coe didn’t waste any time; he went straight at them in a lunge, point extended. The big dark man beat the sword aside, then tried to kick Coe in the knee as the blades locked. Coe let the kick glance off the side of his leg, and rammed the big man in the pit of his stomach with his shoulder, throwing him back against the door and stumbling into the room beyond.
‘Hurry up!’ a young man shouted from the room. ‘For the love of the gods, hurry up!’
Jimmy didn’t bother to watch any more than that: the thin mercenary was coming at him, sword in his right hand, a long knife in the other, knife-hand advanced over the same foot. The young thief frantically tried to remember everything Prince Arutha had told him, all at once and without using words.
‘Skinny’s gonna carve you up proper, me good son,’ the scrawny mercenary said. ‘Come to poppa, yer little bastard, an’ get a spankin’!’
‘Help!’ the young man’s voice in the room beyond shouted. Steel clashed in the room. ‘Get me out of this!’
Skinny made a walking thrust—stepping forward and lunging at the same time which gave him tremendous reach. Jimmy didn’t try to back up: instead, he used his shorter stature to lift the other man’s sword-thrust and went in under it, trying to run him through the throat. That didn’t work: the rapier went up over the mercenary’s shoulder, and the hilts locked. Jimmy twisted desperately as the dagger in the soldier’s other hand stabbed, and then they were chest-to-chest, with the knife-arm trapped against Jimmy’s side by his own.
Not good, Jimmy thought, as he tried to knee the older man in the groin, and hit his thigh instead. He’s a lot stronger than I am.
They circled for an instant, with breath nearly as bad as Foul ol’ Ron’s issuing from the mercenary, and then Jimmy managed to stamp downward and land his heel on the other man’s instep. Skinny howled and pushed. Jimmy bounded backward – and found himself inside the room beyond the door; they’d got turned completely around without his noticing.