She put a hand on my arm. ‘There are far too many of them, you silly fool. You’ll only die here if you try to fight.’
I patted her hand before removing it, oddly touched by her concern, though I wasn’t entirely sure that she’d figured out who I was; maybe she simply didn’t want to lose a reasonably competent servant.
I withdrew my blade and leaped onto the table, knocking over a full plate of duck – but not spilling the claret and, most importantly, not falling on my arse.
Evidalle grimaced in pain as the healer poured a dark, viscous fluid around the spot where the arrow still pierced his hand. ‘Who in all the hells are you?’ he asked.
I smiled. ‘My name, your Lordship, is Falcio val Mond.’ My throat felt a bit dry, a product of having to maintain a servant’s silence all day, so I reached down and took a swig from the wine – and I was right, it was an excellent vintage – before I added, ‘I am the First Cantor of the Greatcoats, also called the King’s Heart. You might not know it yet, Margrave Evidalle, but you are having a very bad day.’
CHAPTER THREE
Running the Tables
There’s a trick to fighting on the deck of a ship. I don’t know what it is, but I fully intend to find out one day. I imagine it requires not being seasick whilst trying to evade the attacks of a rather large group of enemy guards and nobles – oh, and an enraged bride.
‘Take them!’ the lead guardsman shouted. A gold stripe around the collar of his black and yellow livery marked him as either their captain or perhaps just the most stylish dresser among them. His voice wasn’t especially commanding, but it was insistent, and combined with his bushy red hair and buck front teeth, made me think of a particularly angry squirrel.
All sixteen guards were now staring at me, so I took off at a run, charging straight at them across the tops of the tables beautifully dressed in white and gold, screaming obscenities at the top of my lungs and knocking over translucent porcelain plates and golden goblets as I went, much to the consternation of the noble guests and their attendant Knights. This tactic – and it is an actual tactic, which we in the Greatcoats call a ‘Wanton Dancer’ – distracts the enemy by focusing their attention on the wrong target, in this case, me. One day soon I plan to rename this particular version the ‘Suicidal Idiot’.
Brasti took advantage of the momentary diversion to grab his quiver and sling it over his shoulder before running to the raised foredeck where he could rain arrows down on our opponents. Kest slammed the rounded front of his shield across the face of the man closest to him before driving the edge into the stomach of the next. ‘Falcio, coming in low!’ he shouted.
I leaped up from the table and heard the whoosh of a broadsword stroke that could have cost me my ankles pass harmlessly beneath me. The agility and grace of my manoeuvre became marginally less impressive when I landed and the tablecloth slipped out from under my feet, sending me tumbling backwards, shattering crockery and sending half-eaten chicken legs and chewed ribs flying into the faces of those guests who hadn’t yet had the presence of mind to move away.
With the wind knocked out of me, I struggled to draw breath into my lungs, much to the grinning satisfaction of the guardsman who had raised his broadsword high for the killing blow. He was so convinced he was about to end me that I hadn’t the heart to tell him that what I lack in luck and skill, I make up for in sheer bloody-mindedness – well, that, and the fact that a rapier thrust moves at twice the speed of a broadsword stroke. Wincing through the pain, I drove the point of my blade through the leather of his jerkin and into his belly. From the expression on his face, it was clear that he’d found the outcome of our exchange exceedingly disappointing.
I tossed the bleeding man a clean linen napkin from the table. ‘Keep pressure on the wound. The blade missed your stomach, so you still have a chance to live.’ Believe me, I’m no Saint, but I’d dealt with so many monstrous individuals lately that I was developing a fair amount of sympathy for the people forced to work for them.
I rose to my feet in time to face the rest of the guards, who’d been wrestling their way through the crowd to get to me. I’d chosen my terrain carefully: by fighting on the tables in the midst of the guests, I’d made it almost impossible for my opponents to swarm me without accidentally skewering the nobles. Hard to believe, but some of them still appeared to think this was some elaborate wedding performance – Viscount Brugess came within inches of being decapitated as he leaned forward to grab another leg of chicken, clearly sharing Brasti’s enthusiasm for southern spit-roasted poultry.
The Knights were taking a more pragmatic view: they’d already begun dragging their noble employers to the relative safety of the back of the barge, clearing the way for the guards to close in on me. As that made the field of battle less favourable – to me, at least – I jumped off the table and began running along the barge’s wide railing.
Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Brasti will never let you forget it if you tumble into the water and drown.
‘Protect the Margrave!’ Captain Squirrel shouted, cleverly guessing at my destination.
As it happened, I had no false illusions about my chances of reaching Margrave Evidalle in time to deliver the death he so richly deserved, but my apparent intentions were enough to convince the guards currently cornering Kest, Brasti and Chalmers that I was the more urgent danger, and with everyone’s attention once again on me, Kest moved on to Part Two of the plan.
‘Find the sister,’ Kest told the young woman who’d been posing as a Greatcoat.
She didn’t move. This ‘Chalmers’ had likely never been in a battle this full of chaos and mayhem before – more evidence that she wasn’t a proper Greatcoat, since chaos and mayhem were pretty much our stock and trade. As if to prove my point, one of the guards got the brilliant idea to drop his sword and instead try to swat me off the railing using a long bargepole. I squatted down, grabbed the other end and jumped off the rail, then ran to the other side of the boat. With the bemused guard clinging manfully to his end of the pole, I managed to knock the swords out of the hands of at least two of his fellows before he yanked, hard, and I dutifully let go – sending him crashing backwards into yet more of his unfortunate comrades.
‘Cestina’s sister,’ Kest pressed Chalmers. ‘You said Margrave -Evidalle was holding her captive on the barge – is she truly his prisoner, or might she be part of his scheme too?’
‘I . . . no, the Lady Mareina is innocent in all of this! They’ve got her below in the—’