Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild (43 page)

“Stand aside,” Ilbei said. “Ya don’t have to die.”

One of the six near the baskets lobbed a chunk of gold at Meggins the size of a Winterfest ham. Meggins, ever agile, leaned sideways enough to avoid being smashed by the glimmering meteor, which instead slammed into the wall several paces behind him. Meggins’ bowstring thrummed right after, and his missile did much the same, though it passed first through the big fellow’s head and then hammered into the stone wall beyond, creating a scatter of gravel, which clattered to the floor. Meggins grinned as he snatched his next arrow from his teeth.

The other five near the hole reacted less quickly than their comrade, and they watched his throw and subsequent death with surprise. Surprise turned to rage, and plucking up their own hunks of gold, together they charged at Meggins, two of them hurling theirs and the other three simply intent on pulping him directly. Meggins had to dart to his right to avoid the flung gold and couldn’t get off his shot. Kaige ran forward to intercept them before they could get to his friend. Ilbei might have as well, but the two that had been seated took up their chairs, wielding them as weapons, and lumbered toward Ilbei, their footsteps heavy and thudding upon the floor.

The nearest to Ilbei flung his chair when he was barely two steps across the room. Ilbei ducked and rolled sideways. There came another crash as a hunk of gold smashed into the wall behind Meggins. Right after, Ilbei heard the hiss of Meggins’ second arrow whizzing overhead. Another of the men who’d been working the baskets went down. Meggins’ bow clattered to the floor, tossed aside for now. Ilbei heard his companion’s axe and dagger sliding free as the soldier drew them and ran to Kaige, ready for close-quarters combat beside his friend.

Back on his feet, Ilbei had to raise the torch, using it to block a gold-fisted punch directed at his head by one of the men who’d apparently been discouraged by Kaige’s enormous sword. The torch burst into splinters, but it wasn’t enough to stop the blow, leaving Ilbei to deal with the remaining energy, of which there was a lot. It spun him all the way around, forcing him to scramble to keep his feet, which in turn nearly sent him into the hole. He teetered at the edge of it, swinging his pickaxe backward, using its weight to hold his balance. Even so, he was only prevented from falling in by the fact that the man with the other chair hit him. The blow struck him in the ribs as he tipped into the opening, painfully but also hard enough to give him lateral momentum, which he used to dance around the rim of the hole like a tightrope walker. Three steps, and then he was out of it on the other side. He couldn’t help noting as he skirted the rim how small the tiny spot of light was down at the bottom of that hole—such a fall would have lasted a long time, long enough to think about the nature of it on the way down. He shuddered even as he dove clear and rolled toward the far wall. He was just about to regain his feet when all three men were on him. The nearest of them leapt upon him and pinned him to the floor with a knee to his chest that landed like a hammer blow, and the one that had thrown his chair kicked him.

Another hammer blow, this time in the form of a huge hunk of gold, plunged toward his face, courtesy of the man pinning Ilbei to the floor. Ilbei raised his pickaxe to ward it off, just as the man with the chair brought his makeshift weapon down. He managed to stave off both attacks, through luck, mainly, but bad luck followed right after as the chair broke over the head of his weapon and nearly cost him his grip. He had to catch at it, and in doing so, he lowered it. The remnants of the chair were brought to bear against him in that opening, and had he not rolled his head to the side, the point of a broken spindle would have impaled him straight through the mouth and out the back of his neck. A kick to his ribs from the third attacker knocked his breath out, and the big man on top of him held his chunk of gold in two hands, raised on high to finish Ilbei off. Ilbei was done for this time, he knew.

He heard the
thwack
of wood on bone. He thought it was one of his ribs being kicked in, but it wasn’t. Mags had swung her quarterstaff full and flat, and nearly caved in the skull of the brute wielding the chair. His eyes rolled up into his head, and he pitched face forward, stiff as a felled tree. The remnants of the chair clattered and broke apart, rolling on the stone around Ilbei’s head. Ilbei managed to get his pickaxe up to block the two-handed smash that would have brained him, but his attacker let go of the gold with one hand and used it to grab Ilbei’s wrist. The man’s strength was astonishing, and he applied it well, moving his grip up enough to force Ilbei’s hand backwards, clearly intent on breaking his wrist or, at very least, making him drop his pickaxe.

With his free hand, Ilbei punched him in the chest, then twice in the stomach, all three blows in rapid fire. He might as well have punched the wall. The brute tried to smash Ilbei again with the gold in his other hand. Ilbei twisted enough to avoid it. Twice more he narrowly rolled his head aside from similar blows. When the man tried a fourth smash, Ilbei blocked it with his forearm, rolled his wrist over and on top of his assailant’s, and then drove the man’s hand down hard, using the energy of the swing to slam both the hunk of gold and the man’s fingers against the stone floor. Ilbei’s attacker yelped. The gold rolled away, but the brute punched Ilbei in the side of the head anyway. Ilbei tried to turn away from the mammoth-sized fist plummeting toward him, but no such luck this time. He took the shot full, the power of it driving the opposite side of his face hard against the unrelenting stone—which finally made Ilbei mad.

He twisted his right arm, still holding his pickaxe, against the force of the man’s left hand, in particular against his thumb. Strong as his attacker was, he couldn’t prevent Ilbei from getting his hand, and his weapon, free. Ilbei swung it sidewise right after, a rotation of the wrist, and pounded two quick hammer strikes against the man’s temple, stunning him just enough for Ilbei to shove him off and clamber to his feet.

He scrambled back, getting his bearings, and felt the hot spray of blood splash against the side of his face, a lot of it, wet and warm. He blinked it out of his eyes, looking through the haze, dreading that it might be Mags paying the price for saving him. It wasn’t. Kaige had just cleaved the man he’d been fighting in two. The upper portion of the body, cut clean through just below the ribs, had fallen into a basket. It landed at an angle that allowed the still-beating heart to jet blood in a long arc that spurted across the hole and, by random chance, hit Ilbei in the face.

Ilbei saw, however, that Mags was busy. Her intervention had drawn off the man who’d been kicking Ilbei in the ribs, and he was onto her in earnest now. It was all she could do to hold off the pounding onslaught of his attacks, but she worked that quarterstaff better than Ilbei would have thought—the Sisters of Mercy clearly were not the pacifists he’d always assumed they were if they’d taught her all that. The ends of her staff blurred as she
whack-whacked
at her attacker with furious speed. The hardwood rapped the tempo of her fury as it struck the bones of the man’s forearms, raised up as they were in his own defense. Ilbei might not have worried about her if she weren’t steadily backing away. Despite her efforts, the brute pressed her methodically, moving like a trained pugilist. When he got her backed up to the wall, she was going to be in trouble. He didn’t think she could hit him hard enough to knock him out without a full, flat swing like she’d gotten earlier. He hoped he was wrong. But he couldn’t get to her to help her yet, for he still had his own adversary to contend with. The man he’d stunned was already back on his feet and reclaiming his chunk of gold.

A glance Jasper’s way showed that the wizard had fumbled a scroll out of his satchel, which gave Ilbei some hope. But he couldn’t watch, as his opponent was moving in on him, the gold in his hand gripped firmly and ready to smash Ilbei’s head.

A lightning bolt flashed, and for an instant Ilbei was filled with relief, thinking Jasper had finally gotten the spell off and struck down an enemy. But when his vision recovered from the flash, he saw that quite the opposite had occurred, for Jasper now lay on the ground, the brown length of his scroll limply rolling itself back up on the floor where it had fallen from his hands.

But Jasper’s spell hadn’t backfired. Another magician had come into the room, through the iron door near where the two burly fellows had been on their break. The magician was a well-groomed man in a long gray tunic. He wore a close-cut beard that was nearly as black and lustrous as his belt and high boots. Though Ilbei didn’t recognize him from two nights before in the tavern at Fall Pools, he knew instinctively that the spell caster had to be the honorless rogue Ivan Gangue. Right behind Gangue, stepping around him to join the fight with his silver-hilted sword already sliding from its sheath, came the man who called himself Major Cavendis. Ilbei might have cursed him for the liar he was, but he barely had time to call out, “Watch out behind!” before he was back to fending off a furious rain of blows from his more immediate, gold-wielding adversary.

Fortunately, Kaige had seen the two new entrants to the melee in his peripheral vision, Cavendis already darting across the room toward Meggins’ unguarded back. Kaige feinted with his sword at the man he’d been engaged with since cutting the last in half. He slid to his left, trying to get position between the newcomers and his friend. His opponent tried to dodge the feint, a sideways step that left him with one foot half over the edge of the hole. Kaige saw the opportunity, roared and pretended to lunge at him, which the man took to be a tackling move. In trying to leap back along the edge of the hole, away from Kaige’s feint, he slipped and fell in instead. This allowed Kaige time to knock aside Cavendis’ sword before it ran through Meggins’ kidney from behind. Kaige blocked that thrust and the next, drawing the major’s ferocity onto himself, but then it seemed as if he finally realized who he was fighting with. As Cavendis turned on him in full, the big soldier fell back, barely able to defend himself from the onslaught. Kaige parried two more blows, continuing to backpedal, more out of surprise than by the force of the attack. “But, Major, why?” he asked, parrying more thrusts and cuts as he retreated yet another step. Ilbei heard it all, and he knew Kaige was suffering for his innocence again. There just hadn’t been a place in his farm-boy experience for betrayal like that.

Meggins heard it too. “That’s no major,” he called to Kaige. He’d just blocked a punch with his knife, the blade slicing a neat cut clean to the bone and causing his attacker to drop his hunk of gold. In the instant after, the brute was gaping down at the opening Meggins had cut into him, just beneath his upraised arm, the war hatchet planted deep, its blade driven between two ribs. He howled as Meggins shoved the axe handle down like a lever and spread those ribs apart, snapping both and dropping the man to his knees, where pain knocked him out. Meggins kicked him into the hole and ran to help Kaige, who was still retreating under Cavendis’ onslaught. Meggins repeated what he said. “He’s no major, Kaige. He’s a fake. Cut him down.”

Kaige seemed to grab hold of this idea slowly, but the addition of a second adversary was enough to halt the young lord’s advance. Meggins brought a flurry of blows at him, the axe and the knife darting in rapidly, sparks striking off the blades as Cavendis struggled to bat them all away. Kaige caught on a few moments after, and then he too brought his sword to bear more aggressively. The two of them were able to drive the man they’d called major back, his defenses nowhere near up to the task of warding off both of them, and against such diverse weaponry. They pushed the nobleman back until he struck a table near one wall, knocking a stack of gold to the floor. He tried to hop up on it, but slipped. He barely swatted Meggins’ axe aside. Kaige thrust straight for his heart. And then Cavendis vanished.

Kaige’s thrust hit nothing, spearing through empty space and striking the wall, sending a jolt back up its length into Kaige’s shoulder. Meggins’ axe whizzed through the air as well, striking the wooden table and biting off a wedge of wood. Together they spun around, Kaige right, Meggins left, searching. They found him again, on the other side of the room now, the man in the gray tunic beside him. Cavendis stooped and picked up Meggins’ bow, beginning to grin, but then, looking about, realized he had no arrows to go along.

“Missing something there, Major?” Meggins said, and ran toward him again. Kaige made to follow suit, but Ilbei, seeing it, called him off.

“Get Mags,” Ilbei shouted. “Kaige, go on and cut her free.”

Kaige realized immediately the predicament Mags was in. The burly pugilist that had just backed her up against the wall realized his trouble only in the half heartbeat it took for Kaige to heave his sword at him like a spear, an underhanded, scooping sort of throw, that drove the blade straight through the man’s body, staggering him sideways, where he struck the wall and then fell to the ground, limp and dead.

Kaige ran to him right after and, with a boot braced on his hip, worked his weapon free, flashing a smile at Mags, who looked relieved. She ran immediately to help Ilbei. With another long, flat swing, she brought her quarterstaff around and against the side of the man’s head, the thud resounding like she’d struck an empty casket. The brutalized man staggered left, then right, then left again, careening off the wall, spinning and tumbling backwards into the hole to join his two companions who’d gone before.

Lightning flashed again, and Ilbei turned in time to see Meggins crumple like a scarecrow fallen off its post. Ilbei ran full tilt for him, hurling his pickaxe at the wizard, who’d now struck both Meggins and Jasper down. The weapon sounded a low
whoosh-whoosh
as it turned thrice, end over end. The last rotation spun it to where the sharp tooth of its blade would bite right through Gangue’s head, but Cavendis knocked it aside with the black bow. The pickaxe struck hard enough to knock the bow from Cavendis’ grip, but the nobleman had spared the wizard certain death. Cavendis drew his sword and stepped between Ilbei and his pickaxe.