I placed my left foot upon the folding archer’s chest and propelled him backward into the man behind him. I used the recoiling momentum from the push to spin, my blade sweeping through a wide, wild pang, which I had to adjust immediately to stop a head cut from the man who had crossed the porch. As I riposted to his chest and had my own cut parried I became peripherally aware of the one from the roof kneeling now in the street and tearing at his throat, in evidence that Frakir was doing her job.
The man somewhere to my rear made my back feel very exposed. I had to do something fast or his blade would be in me within seconds. So… Rather than riposting, I pretended to stumble, actually gathering my weight, positioning myself.
He lunged, cutting downward. I sprang to the side and thrust with a twisting movement of my body. If he were able to adjust the angle of that cut as I moved I would feel it in seconds. Dangerous, but I couldn’t see any other choice.
Even as my blade entered his chest I did not know whether he had connected with me. Not that it mattered now. Either he had or he hadn’t. I had to keep moving until I stopped or was stopped.
I used my blade like a lever, turning him as I continued my counterclockwise movement, him at its center, hoping to position him between that fourth man and myself.
The maneuver was partly successful. It was too late to interpose my skewered and sagging adversary fully, but in time at least to cause a small collision between him and the other. Time enough, I hoped, as the other stumbled to the side, stepping down from the porch. All I needed do now was wrench my blade free, and it would be one-on-one.
I yanked at it…
Damn, damn, damn. The thing was wedged into bone and wouldn’t come free. And the other man had regained his footing. I kept turning the body to keep it between us while with my left hand I tried to free my most recent adversary’s own blade from his still-clenched right fist.
Ditto the damns. It was locked in a death grip, his lingers like metal cables about the haft.
The man in the street gave me a nasty smile while moving his blade about, looking for an opening. It was then that I caught the flash of the blue-stone ring he wore, answering my question as to whether it was me in particular who had been sought, here, tonight.
I bent my knees as I moved and positioned my hands low upon the dead man’s body.
Situations such as this are, for me, sometimes videotaped into memory — a total absence of conscious thought and a great mass of instant perceptions — timeless, yet only subject to serial review when the mind indulges in later replay.
There were cries from various places along the street, from within and without. I could hear people rushing in my direction. There was blood on the boards all around me, and I recall cautioning myself not to slip on it. I could see the archer and his bow, both of them broken, on the ground past the far edge of the porch. The garroted swordsman was sprawled in the street, off to the right of the man who menaced me now. The body I steered and positioned had become dead weight. To my small relief I saw that no more attackers had emerged from anywhere to join the final man I faced. And that man was sidestepping and feinting, getting ready to make his rush.
Okay. Time.
I propelled the corpse toward my attacker with all my strength and did not wait to observe the result of my action. The risk I was about to take granted me no time for such indulgence.
I dove into the street and did a shoulder roll past the supine figure, who had dropped his blade in trying to use his hands against Frakir. As I moved I heard the sound of some impact followed by a grunt from above and somewhere to the rear, indicating that I had been at least partly on target when I’d pushed the dead man toward the other. How effectively this would serve me still remained to be seen.
My right hand snaked out as I went by, catching the hilt of the fallen man’s blade. I rolled to my feet, facing back in the direction from which I had come, extending the blade, crossing my legs and springing backward…
Barely in time. He was upon me with a strong series of attacks, and I backed away fast, parrying wildly. He was still smiling, but my first riposte slowed his advance and my second one stopped it.
I settled and stood my ground. He was strong, but I could see that I was faster. There were people near at hand now, watching us. A few shouts of useless advice reached me. To which of us it was directed, I could not say. It didn’t matter, though. He stood for a few moments as I began to press my attack, and then he began to give ground, slowly, and I was sure that I could take him.
I wanted him alive, though, which would make things a little more difficult. That blue-stoned ring flashing and retreating before me held a mystery to which he had the answer, and I needed that answer. Therefore, I had to keep pressing him, to wear him down…
I tried turning him, a little at a time, as subtly as I could. I was hoping to press him into stumbling over the dead man to his rear. It almost worked, too.
When his rear foot fell upon the arm of the sprawled man, he shifted his weight forward to maintain his balance. In one of those instants of inspiration on which one must act immediately without thinking, he turned this movement into a rush, seeing that my blade was out of line in preparation for the heavy rush I was about to give him as he stumbled. Wrong of me to have anticipated that much, I guess.
He beat my blade cross-body with a heavy swing, throwing his own weapon way out of line also and bringing us corps à corps, with him turning in the same direction I was facing and unfortunately providing him with the opportunity to drive his left fist into my right kidney with the full force of his momentum.
Immediately, his left foot shot out to trip me, and the impact of the blow as we came together showed me that he was going to succeed. The best thing I could manage was to catch hold of my cloak with my left hand, spinning it out and dragging it back, entangling both our blades as we fell, while I tried hard to turn on the way down, so as to land on top of him. I did not succeed in falling upon him. We came down side by side, still facing each other, and the guard of someone’s blade — my own, I think — hit me hard in the ribs on my left side.
My right hand was caught beneath me and my left was still tangled in my cloak. His left was free, though, and high. He clawed at my face with it, and I bit his hand but couldn’t hold it. In the meantime, I finally managed to drag my own left hand free and I thrust it into his face. He turned his head away, tried to knee me and hit my hip, then thrust stiff fingers toward my eyes. I caught his wrist and held it. Both of our right hands were still pinned and our weights seemed about equal. So all that I had to do was squeeze.
The bones of his wrist crunched within my grip, and for the first time he cried out. Then I simply pushed him away, rolled into a kneeling position and started to rise, dragging him up along with me. End of the game. I had won.
He slumped suddenly against me. For a moment, I thought it a final trick, and then I saw the blade protruding from his back, the hand of the grim-faced man who had put it there already tightening to pull it out again.
“You son of a bitch!” I cried in English — though I’m sure the meaning came through — and I dropped my burden and drove my fist into the stranger’s face, knocking him over backward, his blade remaining in place. “I needed him!”
I caught hold of my former adversary and raised him into the most comfortable position I could manage.
“Who sent you?” I asked him. “How did you find me?”
He grinned weakly and dribbled blood. “No freebies here,” he said. “Ask somebody else,” and he slumped forward and got blood on my shirtfront.
I drew the ring from his finger and added it to my collection of goddamned blue stones. Then I rose and glared at the man who had stabbed him. Two other figures were helping him to his feet.
“Just what the hell did you do that for?” I asked, advancing upon them.
“I saved your damn life,” the man growled.
“The hell you did! You might have just cost me it! I needed that man a
live!”
Then the figure to his left spoke, and I recognized the voice. She placed her hand lightly upon the arm I did not even realize I had raised to strike the man again.
“He did it on my orders,” she said. “I feared for your life, and I did not understand that you wanted him prisoner.”
I stared at her pale proud features within the dark cloak’s raised cowl. It was Vinta Bayle, Caine’s lady, whom I had last seen at the funeral. She was also the third daughter of the Baron Bayle, to whom Amber owed many a bibulous night.
I realized that I was shaking slightly. I drew a deep breath and caught control of myself.
“I see,” I said at last. “Thank you.”
“I am sorry,” she told me.
I shook my head. “You didn’t know. What’s done is done. I’m grateful to anybody who tries to help me.”
“I can still help you,” she said. “I might have misread this one, but I believe you may still be in danger. Let’s get away from here.”
I nodded. “A moment, please.”
I went and retrieved Frakir from about the neck of the other dead man. She disappeared quickly into my left sleeve. The blade I had been using fit my scabbard after a fashion, so I pushed it home and adjusted the belt, which had pulled around toward the rear.
“Let’s go,” I said to her.
The four of us strode back toward Harbor Street. Interested bystanders got out of our way quickly. Someone was probably already robbing the dead behind us. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. But what the hell, it’s home.
Chapter 5
Walking, with the Lady Vinta and two serving men of the House of Bayle, my side still hurting from its encounter with a sword hilt, beneath a moonbright, starbright sky, through a sea mist, away from Death Alley. Lucky, actually, that a bump on the side was all I acquired in my engagement with those who would do me harm. How they had located me so quickly upon my return, I could not say. But it seemed as if Vinta might have some idea about this, and I was inclined to trust her, both because I knew her somewhat and because she had lost her man, my Uncle Caine, to my former friend Luke, from whose party anything involving a blue stone seemed to have its origin.
When we turned onto a seaward side way off Harbor Street, I asked her what she had in mind.
“I thought we were heading for Vine,” I said.
“You know you are in danger,” she stated.
“I guess that’s sort of obvious.”
“I could take you to my father’s place up in town,” she said, “or we could escort you back to the palace, but someone knows you are here and it didn’t take long to reach you.”
“True.”
“We have a boat moored down this way. We can sail along the coast and reach my father’s country place by morning. You will have disappeared. Anyone seeking you in Amber will be foiled.”
“You don’t think I’d be safe back in the palace?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But your whereabouts may be known locally. Come with me and this won’t be the case.”
“I’ll be gone and Random will learn from one of the guards that I was heading for Death Alley. This will cause considerable consternation and a huge brouhaha.”
“You can reach him by Trump tomorrow and tell him that you’re in the country — if you have your cards with you.”
“True. How did you know where to find me this evening? You can’t persuade me that we met by coincidence.”
“No, we followed you. We were in the place across the way from Bill’s.”
“You anticipated tonight’s happenings?”
“I saw the possibility. If I’d known everything, of course I’d have prevented it.”
“What’s going on? What do you know about all of this, and what’s your part in it?”
She laughed, and I realized it was the first time I had ever heard her do it. It was not the cold, mocking thing I would have guessed at from Caine’s lady.
“I want to sail while the tide is high,” she said, “and you want a story that will take all night. Which will it be, Merlin? Security or satisfaction?”
“I’d like both, but I’ll take them in order.”
“Okay,” she said, then turned to the smaller of the two men, the one I had hit. “Jarl, go home. In the morning, tell my father that I decided to go back to Arbor House. Tell him it was a nice night and I wanted to sail, so I took the boat. Don’t mention Merlin.”
The man touched his cap to her. “Very good, m’lady.” He turned and headed back along the way we had come.
“Come on,” she said to me then, and she and the big fellow — whose name I later learned was Drew led me down among the piers to where a long sleek sailboat was tied up. “Do much sailing?” she asked me.
“Used to,” I said.
“Good enough. You can give us a hand.”
Which I did. We didn’t talk much except for business while we were getting unbuttoned and rigged and casting off. Drew steered and we worked the sails. Later, we were able to take turns for long spells. The wind wasn’t tricky. In fact, it was just about perfect. We slid away, rounded the breakwater and made it out without any problems. Having stowed our cloaks, I saw that she wore dark trousers and a heavy shirt. Very practical, as if she’d planned for something like this ahead of time. The belt she stowed bore a real, full-length blade, not some jeweled dagger. And just from watching the way she moved, I’d a feeling she might be able to use the thing pretty well. Also, she reminded me of someone I couldn’t quite place. It was more a matter of mannerisms of gesture and voice than it was of appearance. Not that it mattered. I had more important things to think about as soon as we settled into routine and I had a few moments to stare across the dark waters and do some quick reviewing.
I was familiar with the general facts of her life, and I had encountered her a number of times at social gatherings. I knew she knew that I was Corwin’s son and that I had been born and raised in the Courts of Chaos, being half of that bloodline which was linked anciently with Amber’s own. In our conversation the last time we met, it became apparent that she was aware that I had been off in Shadow for some years, going native and trying to pick up something of an education. Presumably, Uncle Caine had not wanted her ignorant of family matters — which led me to wonder how deeply their relationship might have run. I’d heard that they had been together for several years. So I wondered exactly how much she knew about me. I felt relatively safe with her, but I had to decide how much I was willing to tell her in exchange for the information she obviously possessed concerning those who were after me locally. This, because I had a feeling it would probably be a trade-off. Other than doing a favor for a member of the family, which generally comes in handy, there was no special reason for her having an interest in me personally. Her motivation in the whole matter pretty much had to be a desire for revenge, so far as I could see, for Caine’s killing. With this in mind, I was willing to deal. It is always good to have an ally. But I had to decide how much I was willing to give her of the big picture. Did I want her messing around in the entire complex of events that surrounded me? I doubted it, even as I wondered how much she would be asking. Most likely she just wanted to be in on the kill, whatever that might be. When I glanced over to where moonlight accentuated the planes of her angular face, it was not difficult to superimpose a mask of Nemesis upon those features.
Out from shore, riding the sea breeze east, passing the great rock of Kolvir, the lights of Amber like jewels in her hair, I was taken again by an earlier feeling of affection. Though I had grown up in darkness and exotic lighting amid the non-Euclidean paradoxes of the Courts, where beauty was formed of more surreal elements, I felt more and more drawn to Amber every time I visited her, until at last I realized she was a part of me, until I began to think of her, too, as home. I did not want Luke storming her slopes with riflemen, or Dalt performing commando raids in her vicinity. I knew that I would be willing to fight them to protect her.
Back on
the beach, near the place where Caine had been laid to rest, I thought I saw a flash of prancing whiteness, moving slowly, then quickly, then vanishing within some cleft of the slope. I would have said it was a Unicorn, but with the distance and the darkness and the quickness of it all, I could never be certain.
We picked up a perfect wind a little later, for which I was grateful. I was tired, despite my day-long slumber. My escape from the crystal cave, my encounter with the Dweller, and the pursuit by the whirlwind and its masked master all flowed together in my mind as the nearly continuous action that they were. And now the postadrenal reaction from my latest activity was settling in. I wanted nothing more than to listen to the lapping of the waves while I watched the black and craggy shoreline slide by to port or turned to regard the flickering sea to starboard. I did not want to think, I did not want to move…
A pale hand upon my arm. “You’re tired,” I heard her say.
“I guess so,” I heard myself say.
“Here’s your cloak. Why don’t you put it on and rest? We’re holding steady. The two of us can manage easily now. We don’t need you.”
I nodded as I drew it about me. “I’ll take you up on that. Thanks.”
“Are you hungry or thirsty?”
“No. I had a big meal back in town.”
Her hand remained on my arm. I looked up at her. She was smiling. It was the first time I had seen her smile. With the fingertips of her other hand she touched the bloodstain on my shirtfront.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you,” she said.
I smiled back at her because it seemed she wanted me to. She squeezed my shoulder and left me then, and I stared after her and wondered whether there were some element I had omitted from my earlier equation concerning her. But I was too tired now to solve for a new unknown. My thinking machinery was slowing, slowing…
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