“Let us turn on them and rend them!” he panted out.
“Run.”
We cut along the first cross street aiming to get back to the walls and find a loophole out. I had no real idea of the geography of Drak’s City — I doubt if anyone had much idea of that crawling maze of streets and alleys and hidden courts as an entirety — and so could do no more than run and follow my nose. It would be nice if Ashti and her brother Naghan turned up and out of gratitude for the silver sinvers guided us to safety. But, again, that was out of fairy books.
The reality came as a dozen men sprang from an alleyway and brandishing long-knives and cudgels and a sword or two came blustering down on us.
Very carefully I gave my palms a good wipe down the old blanket coat — on the inside. The muck fouled me abominably. But I needed fists that would not slip on hilts for the work that promised. As though Five-handed Eos-Bakchi decided it was time to smile — just a little — upon me, I spotted an abandoned orange-like fruit called a rosha lying in the water-streaming gutter. A single twist ripped it into half and I smeared the tacky juice over my palms and fingers. That would help to give a good grip. It smelled a little better than I did, too. “We cut through them in one go and keep running,” I told Barty. When they hit us I did just that. I used the hilt a good deal, for I had no wish to kill these fellows. One or two blades flickered around my ears; but with a bash and a whump or two I was through. I poised to run on. I was through — but not so Barty.
He pranced. He took up the stance. His rapier leaned into a perfect line. He foined. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. Like a student fresh from the salle he handled himself with all the perfection of a star pupil. I sighed.
Many a time have I seen these fine young men fresh from sword-training go into rough and brutal action. If they live they learn and then stand a better chance. But all the universities in two worlds don’t teach what a man must know to keep a knife from his guts, a knee out of his groin, a flung chain from around his neck.
They’d have had Barty — had him for breakfast and spat out the pips. Perfect in poise and lunge and parry, holding himself in the correct rapier-fighting position, he would have been easy meat for them. He was lucky — that I own — when a flung cudgel merely brushed past his brown hair. But he couldn’t last.
So I went bashing back most evilly, with a knee here, and a clutch at a raggedy coat here and a jerk and a chunk of the hilt, and a bending-forward so that the attacker went sailing up over me, to be kicked heartily as he hit the ground.
No, if you want to stay alive on many spots of Kregen you do no good trying to fence by the book. A stout-armed fellow with a kutcherer tried to stab the spiked back of the knife into my eye, and I weaved and kicked him between wind and water, and ducked a cudgel from his mate and elbowed his Adam’s apple. My own rapier and main gauche flew this way and that parrying blows and thrusts. I jumped about a fair bit. I got up to Barty and put my foot into the rear end of the man who was going to slip a long knife into Barty’s exposed back and kicked him end-over-end. I had to beat away another kutcherer, careful of that wicked tooth of metal.
Barty had allowed a ruffian to get inside his guard, and with his rapier pointing at the rain-filled skies was dancing around as though the two of them waltzed, neither able to step back to take a slash at the other.
“Barty,” I said, in what I considered a most understanding voice. But Barty jumped, anyway. “Let us get on.”
I stuck the main gauche back into my belt, ignoring the scabbard, took the fellow clasping Barty by the ear, ducked a cudgel blow from somewhere, and ran him across the street. He tried to emulate a swifter and rammed head-on into a moldy wall.
I grabbed Barty.
“And this time, young man, do not stop running!”
We took off. They followed for a bit; but I caught a hurtling cudgel out of the air and threw it back. The man who had flung it dropped as though poleaxed. After that the rest of them more or less gave up the pursuit.
But there were others, far more ruthless, who took it up as we reached the walls. And, as I saw, two thin, furtive, weasel-like fellows remained dogging our footsteps as we ran up to the wall and looked about for the nearest way through or over or under.
The assassins had gathered their strength. Now the mob of men who flowed around a buttress meant to do for us finally.
I took a single look at them and hauled Barty off. We ran fleetly along the wall, dodging refuse, leaping covered stalls, almost treading on a family sheltering under an old tarpaulin. The rain washed away a deal of the muck and stinks; but enough remained for me with my odoriferous clothes to feel at home. A splendidly orchestrated hullabaloo now racketed away at our heels. Barty kept on laughing. I own the situation amused me; but I am notorious for that kind of perverse behavior and I felt some surprise -
pleased surprise, I hasten to add — that Dayra seemed to have found herself a young man of exceptional promise. So we ran along the wall and a gang of kids pelted us with rotten cabbages, green shredding bundles falling through the rain. We ducked into a house built into the wall and leaped over an old fellow who snored in a wicker hooded chair and so rollicked up the blackwood stairs. The upper rooms were filled with all kinds of trash and bric-a-brac indicating the storage places for the junk merchants who thrived on human stupidity and cupidity. Their ruffianly agents scoured around picking up antiques which were then sold at inflated prices to the wealthy of Vondium. Well, it takes all kinds to make a world. We hared through the piles of old furniture and pictures and tatty curtains, past boxes and bales and bundles, heading for the windows. These were all barred. Barty put his foot against a wooden bar and the old wood puffed and shredded — I hardly care to describe that tired sagging away as a splintering of wood.
We bundled through and then tottered back, clutching each other, poised dizzyingly over nothing. I grabbed the lintel. It held, thank Zair, and we hauled in. We stood perhaps fifty feet up the sheer outside wall, in a window embrasured out over the cobbled road below. And at our backs the pursuit bayed up those dark blackwood stairs.
One window along a beam jutted out with a rope and pulley. The junk would be collected here and then hoisted out and lowered onto Quoffa carts below.
“Next window, Jak,” said Barty, cheerfully.
“I had hoped there would be stairs — at the least a rope ladder.” These drikingers of the Old City have their entrances and their exits. Drikingers — bandits of a particular bent — is not too strong a word to apply to some of the fellows in Drak’s City. So we bashed along to the next window and kicked it open and seized the rope.
Loud footfalls echoed up from the room at our backs. Men fell over bundles, and a giant glass-fronted wardrobe toppled to smash to ruination.
‘Time to go, Barty. Come on.”
So, grasping the rope, we let ourselves down as the windlass held against the pawl. We were almost at street level when the first furious faces poked out of the window alongside the pulley-crowned beam.
“Jump!” I yelped. “They’ll start reeling us in any mur!”
So we jumped, and hit the rain-slicked cobbles, and staggered and a flung knife caromed past my ear. Barty staggered up and shook his fist. Men were sliding down the rope. I smiled. Oh, yes, this was a smiling situation.
“They mean to do for us, then. . More running is indicated.”
“Why can’t we stand and blatter them, Jak? By Opaz — I do not care much for all this running. I can’t get my wind.”
“They’ll open up your body quick enough, my lad. Then you’ll have wind and to spare. Run!”
Running off I was aware Barty was not with me and swung about ready to damn and blast him. He was hopping about with his old blanket coat twisted around his legs, trying to disentangle himself, first on one foot then on the other. His face was a wonder to behold.