He cursed and charged toward them, now holding his long knife out in front of him.
Kumul pushed the youth behind him with his left hand and with his right drew out his sword. He smiled tightly, silently thankful their assailant’s clumsiness had given him away. What he did not see was a second man behind him, stepping quickly and silently toward the youth, a knife raised above his head for a single killing blow. The crowd around him fell into frightened silence.
Something in the sudden stillness made Ager turn. Seeing the new threat, he moved without thinking to sandwich the youth between himself and Kumul. The second attacker shook his head—the cripple would slow him down but never stop him. He waited until he was three steps from the crookback before playing the trick that in so many vicious street fights had given him victory. He threw the knife from his right hand to his left and lunged. He was so sure of his advantage that the sudden rasp of metal against scabbard barely registered in his mind, nor the flash of a bright short sword swinging up to impale itself in his body.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kumul had seen Ager shift position and knew what it must mean, but only had time to hope that Ager’s injuries had not ruined his skill with a sword before his own attacker was upon him, slashing wildly with his weapon. Kumul easily deflected it downward with his blade and then flickered the tip up and into the man’s throat, the man’s own impetus driving the point a finger’s length through muscle and artery and into his spine.
The assailant spasmed once and dropped to the ground, dead. Kumul tugged his sword free and spun around, using his left arm to keep his charge behind him. Relief flooded through him when he saw the second assailant on the ground, Ager on top of him, blade sunk deep into his heart and lungs.
“Well done, old friend,” Kumul said, then noticed how still the crookback was. He moved forward and placed a hand on Ager’s twisted shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Ager coughed, turning his head so he could see Kumul with his one eye. “The bastard shifted his knife to his left hand,” he said weakly. “Too late for me to change my grip.” His head slumped and his eye closed as he lost consciousness.
Kumul bent down and saw that a knife had been driven into Ager’s right side to a third of its length. Blood was flowing freely. The youth knelt down next to Kumul.
“That is a serious wound,” he said. “We must get him to the palace.”
Kumul nodded. “I’ll carry him. You take his sword.” Leaving the blade in for fear of doing more damage, Kumul lifted Ager gently as if he weighed no more than a child.
The youth jerked the short sword out of the dead man. “I’ll run ahead to wake Dr. Trion.”
“God!” shouted Kumul. “Behind you, boy!”
The youth spun on his heel and saw a third attacker almost upon him. Obviously undeterred by the fate of his two companions, he had seen his chance to strike when the giant had taken up his burden.
“My friend,” the youth said quietly, “that was a mistake.”
The assassin saw his target move forward to meet him. Surprised, he had no time to slow his charge. Instinctively, he raised the knife’s point to deflect as best as possible any swing toward his neck or head. It was the last mistake he would ever make. He saw the youth take a step sideways and crouch. Before he could react, a sword sliced upward into his belly and ripped out as he stumbled forward. He gasped in pain, felt the earth rise to smash against his head, and lost consciousness before the blade fell against his neck, almost severing it through.
The youth stood, washed in blood, his eyes alight for a moment and then suddenly as dull as coal. His sword hand dropped limply to his side. The crowd started talking excitedly as if the fight had been put on for their benefit.
“Quickly, Lynan! We have to go. There may be others!”
Roused by the use of his real name, Lynan looked up at Kumul. “It’s… it’s not what I thought it would be like.”
“Later! We have to go. Now!”
The two hurried off. Ager, still unconscious in Kumul’s arms, moaned in pain.
“I fear we will be too late,” Kumul said grimly.
“He will live,” Lynan replied fiercely.
“If God is calling him, no one can hold back his ghost.”
“He will live,” Lynan insisted. He looked up at Kumul, tears welling in his eyes. “He knew my father.”
Chapter 2
Ager slipped in and out of consciousness, at times the feeling in his side a gnawing pain and then nothing more than a dull, persistent throbbing. At one point he thought he was floating in air, but he managed to open his eye and realized Kumul was carrying him. He had a vague memory of Kumul doing this once before, but then remembered the memory was of Kumul carrying a friend of his from the battlefield. Dimly it occurred to him that his friend had died, and he wondered whether that would be his fate, though whether he died or not did not seem terribly important to him this moment. Another time he caught a glimpse of a figure of a man floating in the air beside him, his face young and then surprisingly older, and he knew that face, knew it almost as well as his own. It’s his ghost, he thought. He’s come back to take me with him. But then the face was young again, and none of it made any sense to him.
After a while, the feeling in Ager’s side was gnawing more than throbbing, and in his clearer moments he understood it meant he was still alive and unfortunately coming out of whatever delirium had held him. He tried to say something, but Kumul told him to shut up. On reflection, that seemed like a good idea, so he did. Then, just as the pain was becoming too much for him, he was carried through a huge gate. Kumul shouted orders and soldiers scurried away to do the constable’s bidding. He knew he was coming to the end of his journey, and knew that meant some bastard with small hooks and cutters would soon be slicing into him to dig out whatever it was that was causing the hurt.
Kumul was carrying him up a flight of stairs now, and the man’s jolting stride sent spasms of pain through his body and, absurdly, made his empty eye socket itch. He moaned involuntarily, and felt humiliated. He tried apologizing, but Kumul again told him to shut up. Eventually they entered the most luxurious room Ager had ever seen. One wall was hidden by a tapestry of dazzling color. Opposite, a hearth was aglow with a blazing fire. Kumul finally laid him down on something he assumed must have been a proper woolen mattress, for it made him feel as if he was floating. He could hear Kumul and the young man talking earnestly with each other, but for some reason he could make out only a few words, and they made no sense at all.
Despite the warmth from the fire, Ager was beginning to shake. He concentrated on trying to keep his limbs and jaw still, but to no avail. To make things worse, the pain in his side was almost unbearable. He wanted to cry out, but the only sound he could make was another moan. He reached for the source of the pain, but felt something hard there instead of his own flesh. Perhaps he was shaking so much Kumul had had to pin him to the bed. The thought made him want to laugh.
And then Ager was aware of a new presence—a short, bearded man with a clipped monotone of a voice that only added to the room’s background hum. What distinguished him from the other two was a smell that was strangely comforting, and after a moment he realized it was the smell of the sword bush. The realization alarmed him.
Oh, no, he thought. It’s a surgeon. I’m going to hate this man, I know it.