Falconfar 03-Falconfar (28 page)

"How soon?" Talyss asked again, gently.

"More than a dozen days, certainly. Less than two dozen."

She nodded, then pointed wordlessly at the cod-lacings of her breeches—but before the klarl could do more than lift his face hopefully, Belard stepped forward behind him and drove a boot so hard up between Dunshar's legs that the Galathan's body was lifted right off its knees.

The klarl crashed back down onto the floor, quite senseless, and slid on his face down one of Talyss's legs, his limp tongue leaving a damp trail.

She sighed. "Brother, another part of me does need licking."

Belard turned back from making sure the door was securely barred, and gave her a nod.

"My job," he said curtly, thrusting the unconscious Galathan aside to take his place on the floor, and apply his teeth to the lacings.

Talyss smiled fondly down at him.

"Bite me once or twice," she murmured. "I've been bad."

"This," Belard growled into her crotch affectionately, "I had  noticed."

TAEAUNA THREW HERSELF desperately against the old, dark-bearded man running beside her, shoving his sword aside a scant inch or two before it struck Rod's hand.

"Not this one!" she commanded sharply. "Leave him be!"

The rest of the warriors with her swept past into the room, and noisily crossed swords with Narmarkoun's surviving warriors, who were hastening to form a ring around their master. The wizard rolled over and croaked out a spell, gesturing one-handed.

In the stamping, hacking heart of the fray, one of Taeauna's warriors plucked up a fallen sword and hurled it across the room— and the young mages ducked away, cursing and abandoning the spells they'd been weaving.

The blade clanged out the door behind them, and one of the wizards darted after it.

"Glorn! ' Ware!" a warrior shouted, and the bodyguard grunted his thanks as he parried a Darsworder's blade and sent its wielder staggering back with a vicious slash.

A moment later, another Darsworder stiffened and gasped, eyes staring in horror and sword falling forgotten from fingertips. A bone white tendril of mist was rising behind him, probing into the cracks and openings in his worn and ill-fitting armor, as men on both sides of the fight shrank back from him muttering in fear.

Before their eyes, the man shrank and paled and shriveled, his eyes staring hollow cheeks stretched over his skull, mouth locked in a rictus of pain.

He collapsed, and Narmarkoun stood up behind him wearing a cold smile, tall and whole once more, the eerie mist writhing and curling restlessly around his ankles.

The mist spread and reared behind Narmarkoun's men, eager to drain another life—and gloatingly forbidding any thought of retreat.

The Darsworders groaned in despair.

The warriors arrayed against them pressed them with renewed fury. Those who'd fought together in Malraun's bodyguard worked together, Gorongor and Tarlund moving almost as one, Eskeln and Glorn calling warnings and intentions to each other through the flashing steel.

The healed Narmarkoun scowled, spread his hands, and hurled death at them, a storm of phantom swords that felled four men before they could scream.

The two young mages dispelled it, shattering the blades to nothingness, battering Narmarkoun and sending his warriors reeling.

In the aftermath of the dying spells a shimmering door opened in the air in front of the two young mages, revealing an alien sky, gray rainclouds retreating behind skyscrapers.

Narmarkoun's warriors charged at the mages and the door.

Right in front of their blades, the two young men plunged through the magical door and were gone. Their conjured gate winked out with them, and a warrior running towards it slammed into the wall and turned back, shivering in relief.

"Tay!" Rod cried, far across the room, oblivious to everything but his guide and guardian.

She reached down for him, smiling, and Roreld lowered his blade with a nod of understanding.

Then another spell broke over them all, driving the bearded Roreld clear out the doorway and dashing one of Taeauna's other warriors against the walls above it, leaving him limp and broken.

The spell hadn't even been meant for them; it was a thing of unseen hooks flung at Rod Everlar, to snare him and bring him to its caster.

The surviving Doom of Falconfar smiled at Rod in easy menace as the magic swept him helplessly up into the wizard's embrace— and then went right on smiling inside bis mind, as Narmarkoun bored into his thoughts, recoiling only briefly at all the others' memories he found.

The dark and tattered remnant of Rambaerakh rose inside Rod to resist the Doom's mind—and the man who'd once thought he created Falconfar found himself back on the cold stone floor, sticky blood spreading under his left knee, blinking in bewilderment as Narmarkoun viewed and discarded memories, seeking skyscrapers against gray skies, and where—in Rod's world, the Doom already knew, but precisely where—the young mages had fled to.

Rod was helpless, his body moving at Narmarkoun's bidding. Enthralled—enslaved—he watched mutely as the Doom plowed deeper, finding what he wanted.

Holding Rod firmly mind to mind, Narmarkoun conjured up a gate of his own, using what Rod remembered of the office towers he could see in the distance from his back deck.

A cool breeze was blowing from behind them, whisking the storm clouds away, and the trodden grass was wet. The lawn smelled of mud and rotting leaves and... they were through, stepping out of Falconfar and into Rod Everlar's backyard, the tall blue wizard glaring around imperiously and Rod following him helplessly.

The writer stumbled abruptly forward, toppling the startled wizard face-first into an old gift from the neighbor's dog, a slobbering Great Dane named Sadly, who got free and roamed from time to time.

Someone had fierce hold of Rod's legs from behind, just below his knee. Someone who was hissing fiercely, in a voice Rod knew well, "Not this time, wizard! This man is mine!"

HO, DOGS! CAN ye dance?"

The fat man bounding from the top of one stout table to the next, swinging his sword lustily at every face that came within reach, roared the challenge across the pillared feasting room of the Stag's Head like a battle cry.

There weren't all that many diners left to hear it. Bodies littered the floor, blood ran wet everywhere, and Garfist Gulkoun seemed to know within the width of his thick left thumbnail just how far the battered sword in his hand could reach, and had laid open more than a few unwary faces; a dozen men had fled staggering or reeling into the night, trailing blood and cursing.

Wherefore the Stag's Head was no longer the usual crowded, happy place of brisk chatter and feasting this night, but had become a battlefield. Cooks cowered in their kitchens or slunk out of side- doors before any swords were pointed their way, the tavernmaster was in no state to cry them nay nor send for what passed for the law in Galath—and the most brutal of the local lawmen, a cold- eyed knight and his score of armsmen, were already on the scene.

Their swords drawn and their tempers dark from having the prospect of their usual hot dumplings, overdone roast boar with hot horseradish, and tankards of ale snatched away from them, the knight and his men had thrice made a move for the kitchens. Thrice they'd lost an armsman at the merest scratch from the bodkin the bony outland woman had plucked from her boot.

"Poison," they'd muttered, and thrown stools, benches, and daggers her way—only to have them all miss their mark, and be calmly collected, the knives laid in a row along the far end of the bar ready for throwing, and the furniture tossed into a growing heap in the kitchen doorway.

Three had gone for her together, expecting her to scream and run when faced by their largest and best armored warriors, but she'd calmly snatched up and thrown her salvaged daggers coolly and accurately, felling one armsman with a dagger hilt-deep in his eye, and another with a knife sunk so surely in his throat that its pommel held up his chin as he choked his life away.

They now left the slimbones alone, and drew together to hack at the fat man atop the tables—who seemed not at all fearful of their numbers, but merely amused.

"I said take him," Sir Raenor ordered curtly. Reluctantly his armsmen shouldered forward again, swords and daggers held high, acutely feeling their lack of decent shields, and made to clamber up onto tables.

It was expected that the fat man would come racing along the tabletops to stab any man trying to join him atop them, and the armsmen on the floor drew together around every fellow making the ascent, blades ready to protect them—but Garfist Gulkoun had tired of doing the expected years ago. He was down off the tables at the far end to pluck up stools and benches, and hurl them merrily over the tables at the men.

They had been thrown his way earlier, and he was careful to use furniture that was cracked and splintered—and so disintegrated as it struck the armsmen. They reeled under this assault, then roared and rushed the tables, vaulting or overturning them as they came.

The chaos that ensued was no surprise to anyone—nor was Garfist's capering back and forth along the line of his foes, his sword flicking out to open throats or slash faces as he hastened.

"Always be merry," he sang, "never be glum! Her lips like a cherry, as red as her—"

An armsman sprang down on him from behind with a roar, arms spread to capture and pinion Garfist's sword and dagger, but even as his landing ended the fat man's song in a grunt, it became apparent that the outlander had seen the peril, and at the last instant neatly tucked his sword under his arm to jut up behind him—and gut his attacker.

The armsman fell away, blood spilling out of him. Garfist kicked his way clear without looking back, staggered along the line of tables once more, and with a slash of his sword swept both ankles out from under another armsman who was just gaining a tabletop with a roar of triumph.

The man crashed to the floor, screaming and clutching at his half-severed foot. Garfist trod on his face hard, in a bound that took him back atop the tables, knocked aside another sword, and sprang down into the open space in the midst of his milling foe.

Therein he landed—and not by chance—right in front of Sir Raenor, who shouted a challenge, waving his jeweled blade with a flourish.

The toe of Garfist's boot caught him not in the knight's ornate armored codpiece but just behind it, driving up and in with force enough to launch his foe forward in a wild lunge that allowed Garfist to draw his dagger across the knightly throat with calm precision.

Sir Raenor slumped to the floor and into obscurity, and the surviving armsmen all shouted in alarm—however hated their employer had been, the custom established under King Devaer was clear: when knights or nobles were slain by anyone except a wizard or another noble, their bodyguards or armsmen were held personally accountable for the death—and someone's wild sword- swing sent a flaming lantern off its hook and spinning through the air to crash at the foot of the common room's one drapery, an old, much-patched, and rotten window-cloth that burst into flame.

Garfist and Iskarra had both seen blazes like it often enough to know what fate awaited the Stag's Head. They started sprinting for the front doors, Gar waving his sword wildly to clear himself some running room, and Isk sweeping up her salvaged knives in a bundle, heedless of their edges, so as to have something to hurl at her assailants as she fled.

Halfway to his goal, with armsmen converging on him from all sides, Garfist abruptly stopped, spun around and gutted the nearest man, let the next two run past him in their haste, and slashed open a fourth man's forehead, blinding him with blood streaming into his eyes.

"Isk?" he roared. "Get out!"

"Brilliant idea!" his partner called back, as she raced down the room. "So favored by the Falcon am I, to have a man handy to command me into doing what I would never have thought of, if I'd been all alone!"

The front wall of the room, near the drapery struck by the lantern, was now aflame, and the armsmen entangled in the wreckage by the kitchen were starting to cough and curse.

Iskarra reached Garfist's side, stabbing her way through the knot of men surrounding him, and warned, "Lots of witnesses, Old Ox!"