He almost got his sword up before Pikel grabbed him by the ankles and yanked his legs out from under him.
Pikel continued to pull, dragging the man away from Ivan. Rage blinded the green-bearded dwarf.
“Ooooooo!” he growled, winding up, beginning his spin, and locking the man’s feet under his arms.
The assassin twisted and turned to get at the dwarf, but Pikel’s footing was sure and his spin quickly gained enough momentum to force the man out straight.
“Ooooooo!”
The man bounced and flailed, and had all that he could handle in just keeping a hold on his sword.
“Ooooooo!”
Then the only part of the assassin making any contact with the ground was his arms as he struggled to find anything to grab on to.
“Ooooooo!”
Pikel spun furiously. The man, narrowly missing porch posts and the inn’s wall, heartily joined in his screaming.
Ivan, back up, watched in disbelief that soon turned to amusement. The dwarf laid his brother’s club aside, spat in both his hands, and took up his huge double-bladed axe.
The killer noticed Ivan’s preparations and gave a halfhearted swing of his sword, not even coming close to hitting the mark. His arm still extended, he slammed his wrist against the porch support as he came around, his sword flying harmlessly out into the street.
Ivan tightened his grasp on the axe. He started to swing, but the man was past him.
“Gotta lead him,” the dwarf reminded himself, taking a bead as the circling target came around again. He saw the assassin’s face go ghastly pale, saw the most profound look of horror the tough dwarf had ever witnessed.
Slam!
Distracted by a rare onset of sympathy, Ivan’s timing was not so good and he buried his axe deeply into the wooden decking.
Pikel didn’t even notice his brother or the axe, didn’t notice that the killer’s scream had dissipated in a breathless gasp of terror, and had no idea how he would stop the world from spinning in his dizzy head.
“Ooooooo!”
The weight was gone suddenly and Pikel twirled into the wall. He looked down at the empty boots still held tightly under his arms.
The poor assassin took out the closest supporting pole and crashed through the railing, breaking under the top rail and skidding along through the thin, carved balusters. He bounced along for several feet then came to an abrupt halt, his hip driving onto the pointed edge of a broken beam. There he lay, half on the porch and half hanging out over the cobblestone street, groaning softly.
“Nice boots,” Ivan remarked, running past Pikel and tossing his brother the tree-trunk club he’d brought along. Ivan started for the fallen man then veered away, hearing a scream as someone went toppling over a balcony of the Dragon’s Codpiece, two doors down—Cadderly’s balcony.
Both dwarves breathed a sigh of relief when they rushed past the unmoving form of the fallen man, glad that it was neither Cadderly nor Danica who had gone for such a tumble. But the continuing sounds of battle twenty feet above them told them that their friends were not out of trouble just yet.
The door to the inn was closed again, and barred, but such had never stopped the Bouldershoulder brothers. Actually, coming into the hearth room with a dislodged door in front of them proved a good thing for the dwarves, for several crossbow quarrels greeted their entrance, thudding harmlessly into the oaken barrier.
A quarrel ripped past Cadderly’s shoulder, drawing a line of blood along his arm. Night Masks bore down on him from behind, and two others waited on the balcony, a sword and a heavy axe gleaming dully in the predawn light.
Still holding Danica by the hair, Cadderly pulled the young woman to her feet. Immediately, she became a blur of motion, snapping a burst of kicks and punches at the already wounded men who were closing from behind. She landed several solid hits, enough to force one of the assassins to back off. But the other caught Danica around the waist and his momentum carried both of them across the narrow balcony to the rail.
Danica got one hand up onto her attacker’s face, her fingers seeking out the man’s vulnerable eyes. One of the Night Masks on the balcony, though, forewarned of the extraordinary woman’s prowess, found a devilish answer. A single swing of his huge axe broke apart the railing that supported both Danica and her attacker.
They pitched over the side together, Danica releasing her grasp on the man’s face and swinging both her arms wildly to find a handhold.
Cadderly saw her fall away, his face locked in a stare of helpless denial.
A crossbow quarrel smacked into the back of the young priest’s thigh. He turned as he sank to the deck, sheer rage splayed clearly on his usually calm features.
Without even thinking of the movement, Cadderly lifted a clenched fist toward the bowman and uttered, “Fete!” the Elvish word for fire, the command word for his magical ring.
A line of flames shot out from Cadderly’s hand, seeking his attacker, immolating the man in a burning shroud.
With a mental shriek of revulsion, Cadderly ended the fire. He spun again, his walking stick leading, and got a solid hit on the swordsman. He didn’t really care how badly he’d hurt the man, all he wanted was to get the man out of his way, to clear the path to the axe-wielder who had sent Danica away.
Again, inexperience had led Cadderly to an unwise single-mindedness. Before he ever got near to the axe-wielder, strong hands grabbed at his shoulders and drove him to the side railing.
Ivan threw the heavy door aside, meaning to charge right to the stairs. A gruesome sight off to the side slowed him, though, for just a moment, and when he resumed his charge, his fury had heightened tenfold.
Pikel, too, thought to head straight for the stairs. “Uh-oh,” he mumbled and he ran to the right, for the cover of the room’s bar instead, for several dark shapes knelt in formation on and above that staircase, all holding deadly crossbows.
Pikel dived over the long bar, coming to a crashing halt along the narrow walkway behind, up against kegs of ale. To the dwarf’s surprise, he was not alone, and he just managed to convince Fredegar Harriman that he was not an enemy a heartbeat before the terrified innkeeper bonked him over the head with a full bottle of elven brandy.
A quarrel ricocheted off the blade of Ivan’s axe, and another struck the dwarf on the head, stunning him, though his fine helmet managed to deflect the thing up between the deer antlers. Perhaps that particular quarrel knocked some sense into the thick-headed dwarf, for Ivan wisely cut to the side, skidding in around the staircase and scrambling for cover underneath it. He slammed hard into one of the structure’s supports as he rushed in, getting all tangled up with it. By the time the dwarf figured out that it was just an ordinary wooden pillar and not some lurking enemy, he had battered it to pieces.
Ivan blushed, thinking himself incredibly foolish. Then he looked around, noticing the other four supports—one more on that side, two on the opposite side and one in the middle—and a wide and wicked grin spread over his face.
Danica caught hold of the feeble trim along Cadderly’s balcony, and her strong hands would not let go, despite the nagging weight of the assassin still clutching at her waist.
The woman wriggled and squirmed, freed up one foot, and slapped it back and forth across the stubborn man’s face.
Only a dozen feet from the ground, the attacker wisely let go, dropping heavily but unharmed to the cobblestones.
Danica’s thoughts of climbing back up to join Cadderly on the balcony lasted only a moment, until the trim split away on one end from the main frame, sending Danica on a swinging ride around the corner of the balcony.
She kicked out and leaped before the trim broke away all together, latching on to the sill of a window near the building’s corner, opposite from where she’d left Cadderly. Unable to break her momentum, Danica was forced to leap out again, farther from the fight, but landing with a more solid handhold and foothold on a gutter running up the side of the building, just around the cor
ner.
By the time she managed to peek around, the balcony was crowded with black-and-silver-outfitted assassins. She didn’t see Cadderly at first amid that throng and couldn’t pause long enough to sort him out, for one crossbowman put her immediately in his sights, and two other assassins came over the rail, walking the ledge toward the gutter.
Danica scrambled the ten feet or so to the rooftop. Only as she pulled herself over did she realize that she had somehow badly twisted her knee, probably in the struggle over the railing.
“Cadderly,” she mumbled over and over. She was reminded vividly of when she had left the young priest to join the fray in Shilmista, when she had been forced to trust Cadderly to take care of himself.
She started across the roof, thinking to go right above the balcony and leap down upon the enemy. She turned, though, hearing the gutter groan under the weight of a pursuer.
“Do come up,” Danica muttered, thinking to clobber the fool as soon as he poked his head over the roof’s edge. It never occurred to her that the well-prepared band might already have someone planted on the roof.
She heard the crossbow click behind her.
“A valiant fight, Lady Maupoissant,” said a baritone voice at her back, “but a futile effort against the skill of the Night Masks.”
Cadderly’s walking stick flew away when he collided with the railing. He hardly kept his bearings as he spun over, but did manage to loop one arm around the railing.
It seemed a wasted effort, though, for the assassin clubbed at that arm mercilessly, determined to drop the young priest over the side.
Cadderly’s first instinct told him to just drop—the fall probably wouldn’t kill him. He realized, though, that another assassin loomed below, and he would be easy prey before he ever recovered from the fall.
None of it seemed to matter when the second Night Mask, the axe-wielder, joined the first at the railing above him.
“Farewell, young priest,” the man said, lifting his cruel weapon to split Cadderly’s head wide.
Cadderly tried to utter a magical command at that man, but he could do no more than groan as the club connected again against his already wounded shoulder.
The young priest glanced around desperately, only a brief moment left open to him. He saw a tiny ledge along the building a few feet away, behind him, and for some reason he didn’t understand a memory of Percival, the white squirrel, skittering happily and easily along ledges at least that thin back at the Edificant Library, came to him.
There was no way any man could make that leap to the ledge, as twisted as Cadderly was. Yet somehow, he was there. Hand over hand, foot over foot, the young priest ran along the ledge.
“Get him!” he heard one of the frustrated and astonished assassins yell from behind, and the other called for a crossbow.
Cadderly came up fast on the corner, with no intention of turning aside. The alley was only about eight feet wide at that point, but the only apparent handhold on the building across the way was several feet higher than his present perch. By the time Cadderly registered that fact in the still-dim morning light, though, it was too late for him to alter his course.
He leaped, soared, impossibly high and impossibly far. Hardly slowing, he found himself scrambling easily up the side of the other building, disappearing over the top before any crossbowman back on the balcony could get a shot at him.
Pikel peeked up over the bar to see one of the assassins bearing down on him, the other two leaning over the far side of the staircase, trying to get a shot at Ivan.
The green-bearded dwarf hopped up, club in hand, ready to meet the challenge.
“Here,” came Fredegar’s call behind him. Pikel glanced back to see the brandy bottle, stuffed with a burning rag, coming for him.
“Oo oi!” Pikel cried, too startled to catch it, as Fredegar had intended. The dwarf did get a hand off his club fast enough to tap the bottle over him, though, and he spun around and slammed the slow-moving missile with his club, creating a small fireball and showering the approaching assassin with glass shards and flaming liquid.
“Oo oi!” Pikel squealed again, happily, as the man fell away to the floor and rolled around, desperate to get the stubborn flames off his robes.
When the assassin finally got back up, he ran screaming for the door, having no more heart for the fight.
The dwarf hopped up on the bar then fell back again as the bowmen on the stairs took note of him.
Cunning Ivan’s only mistake was that he saved the center support for last. Not until he knocked it out, with a single powerful swipe of his axe, did the grinning dwarf realize that he was standing directly under the heavy structure.
The stairs, and the two surprised assassins standing on them, came tumbling down.
Only one of the men had regained his feet when Ivan finally managed to burst through the pile of broken wood. The dwarf came up with a roar and tried to swing his axe, only to find its head caught fast on a random beam.
The assassin, bruised but not too hurt, grinned at him and pulled out a short sword.
Ivan tugged mightily, and the axe pulled free, coming across so swiftly that neither the dwarf nor the assassin even realized its movement as it struck the assailant, cutting cleanly through the man’s belly.
“Bet that hurt,” Ivan mumbled with a helpless, almost embarrassed shrug.
Again Pikel hopped up on the bar, and again he reconsidered, seeing a pair of dark shapes rush out of Cadderly’s room into the aisle above, right to the lip of the fallen stairway.
The frustrated dwarf groaned loudly—those two also carried the wretched crossbows.
Pikel realized that he wasn’t their target, but he knew, too, that Ivan, standing, unsuspecting, right below the ledge, was.
SIXTEEN
SCRAMBLE
Night Masks.
The words stung Danica’s heart as surely as could the crossbow bolt aimed her way. Night Masks: the guild that had killed her parents, the wretched assassins of Westgate, the city in which Danica had been raised. The questions that rushed into the young woman’s mind—Had they come for her? Were they working for the same enemy that had sent Barjin to the Edificant Library and the invading army into Shilmista?—were no match for the bile, the sheer rage, that climbed up her throat.
Slowly, she turned to face her adversary, locking his gaze with her own. He was a curious sight, bleeding in several places, leaning to one side, and struggling to draw breath. Half his face swelled in a grotesque purple bruise and wooden splinters stuck from his hair, face, and arms. And for some reason, the man was barefoot.
“I will not ask for a reprieve,” the assassin slurred, waving the weapon. “Not after the dwarves …” He shook away the frightening memory of the fight at the other inn, dropping several splinters to the roof with the effort.
“You shall be offered none,” Danica assured, barely able to spit the words through gritted teeth. A growl escaped her lips as she dived to the roof and rolled.
The crossbow fired and Danica felt something thud against her side, though she was too enraged to know the seriousness of the wound or even to realize the pain. She came up near where the man had been, to find that he had taken flight.
Danica was on him in a few strides. He spun to face her, and she leaped into him, grabbing him tightly. Her knee moved repeatedly, each blow connecting with the man’s groin.
She hit him a dozen times, grabbed his hair and ears and yanked his head back from her then pulled it forward and drove her forehead in to meet it, splattering the man’s nose and knocking out several teeth. Danica kneed him a dozen more times and butted him again. Her fingers raked the beaten man’s face, and she drove one finger right through his eye.
Night Masks!
Danica jumped back from the doomed man, spinning a circle kick that snapped his head to the side and forced him into a series of stumbling steps. Somehow he didn’t fall down, though he was hardly conscious of his surroundings.
Danica leap
ed high behind him, lay herself flat out, planted both feet on the man’s back, and sent him in a running takeoff over the roof’s edge.
She pulled herself back to her feet and saw that two men had gained the roof by the gutter, though neither had summoned the courage to charge the furious woman.
Too many emotions assaulted the wounded and weary monk. The appearance of the assassins, the knowledge that they were Night Masks, sent her mind careening down a hundred corridors of distant memories—and more recent memories, too, like the strange dream of the previous night, when she had, for a moment, entered the consciousness of some mysterious attacker.
And what had happened to Cadderly? Danica’s fear multiplied when she learned the identity of the killers. Had the Night Masks again taken the love from Danica’s life?
She fled, her eyes filled with tears, her arm and side throbbing. Up the sloping rooftops, across the uneven angles, leaping the small gaps, the young monk ran.
The two killers followed her every step.
Ivan looked down, an inch to the side, to the neat hole the crossbow quarrel had drilled into the lumber pile. Slowly, the dwarf lifted his gaze to the men standing ten feet above him. One leaned over the broken ledge, smiling grimly, with a cocked crossbow pointed Ivan’s way.
Sheer desperation shoved new heights of insight into the mind of Pikel Bouldershoulder. Ivan—his brother!—was about to die. Pikel’s eyes darted around, taking in a surrealistic view of the grim scene.
Bar … pile … dead man—guts, yech … struggling men … Ivan … precipice … crossbowman … chandelier …
Chandelier? A chandelier above the leaning man.
They had to bring the thing down to light the candles, Pikel reasoned. The dwarf whipped his head around, his gaze coming to rest on the crank, conveniently located at the back of the bar.
The assassin standing over Ivan paused long enough to wave good-bye to the helpless dwarf.