‘For ever and ever,’ they muttered and turned into the river. It only came up to their shins, but had spated with the rain and the force of it was enough, with the stone-littered gravel bed, to stumble them. They moved like sleepwalkers towards the distant flickering lights of the Forge, Kirkpatrick in the rear and concentrating on his footing, cursing the dark and the wet and bad cess of the whole business.
Lucky to get away with it, he thought to himself, just as he heard the scatter of pebbles sliding under an unsteady foot. He turned, saw a dark shape and started to duck – and then the world exploded the side of his head into a bright light.
Hal and Isabel turned as Kirkpatrick reeled backwards and hit the water with a great spray; Isabel screamed and part of the rainsoaked dark seemed to tear itself away and lunge at Hal. He had time to see the winking flash that sliced the explosion of water, had time to realize that the wild, flailing hilt of that dagger had felled Kirkpatrick. Had time for the crazed eyes to sear a name into his head …
Malise.
Then the black shape was on him and all was mayhem.
Isabel saw the shadow and screamed again, knowing who it was even as Hal took the rush of it and Kirkpatrick toppled into the water like a felled tree. She saw him, arms out and loose, launched away on the shallow water and turning like a log, so that she knew he was unconscious and would drown unless she helped.
She floundered to him, underkirtle and sacking and the slung arbalest conspiring to suck her to a stop, levered him face up, hearing the splash and grunt of the two men fighting.
‘Wake,’ she roared at him, slapping his whey cheeks, aware of the great bloody bruise on one side of his face, but his head rolled back and forth and she shrieked her frustration at him, and then began hauling him to the nearby bank in a fury of panic that she would not get back to help Hal in time.
Hal thought Malise was the ugliest thing in creation, his greasy pewter hair plastered to his skull, his face a braided knot of hate, studded and pitted and marked down one side with nicks and glassy pocks and a nose bent sideways like a ruined spoon.
They held each other like fumbling bad lovers, Hal’s fist clamped on Malise’s wrist as he tried to bring the dagger down, Malise’s other arm flailing wildly and blocked, time and again, by Hal’s forearm. Hal felt the dull pain there and, in desperation, struck out between Malise’s blows, felt the man stagger; for a moment they lurched and lumbered in the fountaining water, before Malise recovered and they strained, almost still.
‘I will finish you, Lothian.’
His breath was fetid as a dragon’s; Hal remembered watching Bruce in a fight long ago and spat his own sourness into Malise’s face, which made the man roar and tug. Malise tried to bite and gouge.
A mistake, Hal thought, clinging on with a panicked sense of his failing strength, the sear of the old wound along his ribs, the trembling ache of his wrist – he has turned rabid …
Malise, in a maddened, careless fury, tried to butt Hal; then he swung round, tumbling them both into the water in a spray fine as diamonds. Spitting and growling like soaked dogs, they rolled apart and came up looking for one another.
Hal turned an eyeblink too late and took a blow meant for his throat on his wildly flung hand, so that Malise’s forearm smashed into the wrist Badenoch had damaged at the Pelstream fight. The shock and pain made him cry out; Malise gave a bellow of triumph and kicked, but the water hampered him enough to cushion the blow. Yet Hal, off balance, stumbled and fell, floundering.
Malise gave an exultant howl and started forward – only for something to drop round his neck and haul him up short, so that he almost fell backwards. Furious, puzzled, he twisted round in the grip of what felt like a noose – into the wet, grim face of Isabel, her hair a Medusa of wild wet snakes over her face and the arbalest held in both hands.
She had struck with it, but it was spanned and she had missed, dropping the loop of a prong and the taut braided cord over Malise’s shoulders like a noose; there was no quarrel in it, for she had dropped that. He saw the lack, looked at her and snarled. He started forward and she pushed back, keeping him away as he came hard up against the braided cord. He reached up his dagger-free hand and started to lever it over his head.
‘You will burn in Hell,’ he screeched and she heard the wild, strange cry, almost like a plea – and all that he had done to her, all the foul things he had poured on her body and in her ears, washed up like old sick. He saw it in her eyes.
‘Then I will meet you there,’ she said and pressed the sneck.
The arbalest bucked and thrummed. The string took Malise in the throat like a ram, crushing apple and pipe and forging such a searing pain that he shrieked away from it and tore free, ripping the weapon from her grasp. He fell in the water, floundering free of the tangle of the arbalest and rolling over.