Shrift allowed him to pass with a help yourself gesture. She followed him up.
He opened the door to her room and stood frozen for a heartbeat, unable to comprehend what confronted him. Hawl lay on the bed, her chest a wet mess of blood; on the floor just at his feet lay Grinner, face down, stabbed in the back.
As he drew breath to shout a hand closed over his mouth from behind and searing pain lanced his back as a length of razor iron was pushed through his torso. He fell, stunned in agony. Only distantly did he register a boot on his back and the blade’s being yanked free.
A woman’s voice, Shrift, breathed close into his ear: ‘Should’ve paid better, Crust.’ Then footsteps thumped away down the stairs.
Distantly, from below, he heard Sureth ask, ‘How is she?’
Some mumbled answer sounded, then a table crashed and feet stamped. Someone was cursing and he realized it was him. Low, he told himself, she struck low.
He started dragging his body towards the stairs.
*
They each fought with two knives. Their favourites, of course; preferred weight and lengths. Dancer lost count of the thin slashes he received on arms, sides and thighs as they ran, fought, twisted, jumped, swept and rolled. Conscious thought and planning were gone; all that remained was pure instinct and muscle reflex as attacks and blocks, feints and reverses flew past one another too fast for the mind to separate or even register.
His shirt hung in tatters, slashed from his arms, chest and back. The lad’s own face, neck and chest were a smear of blood, and when they grappled, tiring now, their arms slipped and slid on the sweat and blood sheathing them as they each fought for advantage.
Even so, the lad Cowl’s wide eyes blazed with a seemingly insane fury just a hand’s breadth from Dancer’s own, utterly untouched by the normal fear of mortality, and from this Dancer knew he was locked in potentially the most perilous duel of his life.
For no one was more dangerous than those who did not care if they lived or died.
So they fought on, crashing through doors, slamming into tables, slashing, neither quite able to land a stopping, definitive blow. A kick from Cowl sent him flying backwards into the road and the lad launched himself upon him and Dancer caught blade for blade. The lad head-butted him and though he’d turned his head aside stars still flashed in his vision and agony flamed from his thigh – he staggered off, clutching his leg.
Cowl followed, but slowly now, shifting his grips on his knives, rubbing a bloody forearm across his face but leaving even more of a smeared layer. His hair was a slick sweaty mess and he panted, favouring his own right leg as he tracked Dancer’s movements.
Dancer limped to half fall against the stone lip of a river channel. He shook drops of sweat from his vision, or perhaps they were tears of pain. He managed to straighten, held out his weapons, ready.
The lad was nodding now as he came. He pointed one blood-smeared knife. ‘You were good,’ he panted. ‘But now it ends as it always does.’
He edged up closer and closer, knives weaving in a dance of diversion and deceit, reversing, twisting, low and high, never stopping.
Dancer waited until just the right distance, then rushed him.
They grappled, arms twisting and sliding, neither releasing his blades. Their hot wet breath mixed as they turned round and round each other, grunting and hissing, legs kicking, searching for a hold.
Dancer realized his strength was leaving him in a steady stream out of the thrust through his leg. He had no more time.
He dipped his shoulder, which allowed Cowl to bring his knife up towards his chest. Immediately, the assassin abandoned his other weapon to clamp both hands to the slick grip to push. Dancer dropped his blades to wrap both hands round Cowl’s and they stood rigid, straining, their breaths rasping from taut chests.
‘It’s all right,’ Cowl whispered bare inches from his face, his eyes so eerie and wild. ‘You did your best.’ And he crooned as if to a child: ‘No more worries now … hush now … It’ll all be over soon…’
Dancer knew it had to be now. That this was in fact his last chance. He allowed a fraction of the true exhaustion that hung upon him to show, and the keen tip of Cowl’s blade edged closer to his chest. The assassin leaned even more of his weight on the knife, straining.
Dancer threw both of them backwards over the stone lip.
In that instant of surprise he twisted the blade up towards Cowl’s neck.
They hit the swampy mud and reeds and immediately sank. He lost track of the man as he flailed, coughing on a lungful of fetid slimy water. He drew two more blades, spinning, turning, searching, but no fiend came lunging from the weeds.
He lay still, worked on slowing his breath, and listened to the night.
The punishing winds lashed the tall weeds and rushes. Another brilliant burst flashed across the city and the report of the explosion rumbled and echoed over the rooftops. Slowly, so very weary, he pushed his way through the muck for the sloped stone wall of the channel.
Chapter 18
Tayschrenn sat with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped round them. He rocked, eyes closed, thinking, Get up! Move! But he could not. He was so tired. Just resting on land was privilege enough. The barrage was a constant background now; blasting attacks potent enough to have sprayed the consciousness of any other practitioner across the hillsides. Still they pursued; still they sought him.
Just go away!
But they would not, of course. They smelled blood now, so to speak. A day ago he simply ignored all their combined efforts as a nuisance to his flight. But not now. Now it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain his defences. Eventually, they would crack beneath the relentless punishment.
He’d been so certain he could escape them! Yet, somehow, they had pursued him into the deepest lineaments of D’riss and found him there; somehow they had even tracked his essence into far hinterlands of the Warren of Thyr. He had even thrown what little bits and pieces of Mockra he’d picked up as false trails and delusions; yet they had seen through these and pushed on upon his trail. Only through the sheer might of his command did he now stave them off.
The priests of D’rek were utterly remorseless.
If he could just hold on – outlast them. Then, perhaps, he had a chance.
He blinked then, where he crouched in an alley of shingle-stone buildings in some cold city, and suddenly found himself somewhere else.
It was light now, a sort of dusk, and the ground was soft beneath him. He eased the clench of his arms and raised his head, cracking open his eyes. His essence, his kha, had been transported somewhere new.