Across the chamber, through failing vision, the old woman saw the guards had finally reacted. They charged through the nursery doorway, their armour shining unbearably in bright sunlight. With drawn swords they ran, bellowing battle cries, across the chamber toward the tong.
Behind her, the assassin pounced. Little Ayaki howled wrathfully. Nacoya struggled to raise her cheek from a puddle of pooling blood. She could not see but only hear the scuffle of Ayaki’s bare feet drumming on the floorboards. Her vision went dark, and her dying thought was recognition: the cord was still tangled in her fingers. She had done nothing more than force the assassin to use his knives . . . A boy who died honourably by the blade would still be dead.
‘Ayaki,’ she murmured, and then, heartbrokenly, ‘Mara . . .’ as darkness took her.
* * *
Kevin lunged, thrust, and cleared his sword. An enemy fell screaming at his feet. He leaped over the thrashing, gut-wounded man, and met another. Somewhere in the fray he had picked up a foe’s shield, and it had saved his life. He had taken another cut in his left shoulder, and a glancing slash across the ribs. His movements were hampered by the sting. Blood flowed over his bare skin and soaked soggily into his loincloth. Every movement hurt. The enemy swordsman exchanged three strokes with him before realizing he fought a slave. He snarled an oath and dodged past. Kevin stabbed him unceremoniously from behind.
‘Die for Tsurani honour,’ the barbarian cried savagely. ‘Gods, please, let the runts keep being stupid.’
Let them keep underestimating his war skills, that Mara might stay alive.
But there were too many. Enemies kept sallying from the trees. As Kevin whirled to stave off another attacker, he realized the Acoma were more than just surrounded. Their circle was breached. Foes charged through and started hacking at the bodies that lay across the litter which sheltered Mara.
The Midkemian screamed like a banshee and ran a man through. He abandoned his blade in the corpse, snatched up another from the ground. In the same unbroken movement he kicked over the fallen litter. The wooden frame hammered down, driving enemy soldiers into a scattered rush back; then the litter thumped to a rest, with Mara and her shield of dying bodyguard fenced underneath.
Kevin charged over the barrier. ‘Back, you pig-licking dogs!’ He added obscenities in Tsurani and hurtled over the wreckage.
His blood-streaked, near-naked body and berserker’s howl startled the lead ranks into hesitation. He landed on an arrow, felt the sting of its four-bladed head cut his heel, and cursed again in Yabon dialect. ‘May Turakamu eat your heart for breakfast,’ he ended, and then the swords came at him.
He could not parry so many. Nor could he wonder if his use of the litter for a ram had injured Mara. He only understood he would die here and was not pleased with the prospect.
A sword sliced his shin. He stumbled, fell, rolled. The air above his head became bisected by weapons driving to impale him. They narrowly bit earth; he felt the disturbed dirt strike his shoulders. He unlimbered his shield and rolled hard over again, bringing it upward in a vicious blow to the groin of a man who moved too slowly. Kevin’s body wedged at last under the canted litter. His searching fingers encountered a fallen shield. He twisted, scraping against wood, and came up with the shield in front. His palms stung as enemy blows rained down, momentarily thwarted.
‘Gods, this can’t last.’ His curses now sounded suspiciously like crying. And the swords hammered his shield, incessantly. They split toughened needra hide and wood, and left him clutching splinters. Very far off, perhaps in the wood, he heard shouting and the clatter of more fighting. ‘Damn them, damn them.’ He loosed a bitter laugh. ‘We’re defeated, and still they want to butcher us.’
The sword sliced air with a whine and bit flesh. A black-haired head tumbled in a bouncing roll among the bedclothes.
Still the Acoma guard kept yelling, and before the assassin fell, he had slashed the body three times. The corpse collapsed in a ruck of sodden fabric, and shuddered convulsively amid the cushions.
Spattered with the blood of the tong, and crying in wild-eyed terror, Ayaki wormed out from under the corpse. A gash on his young neck bled freely, and he threw himself mindlessly against the wall in an attempt to escape from stark terror.
‘Fetch Keyoke,’ cried the warrior with the dripping sword to the other who bent over the body of Nacoya. ‘There may be other assassins!’