‘Shit!’ another shouted, slapping at the flames that had suddenly sprung up his trouser leg.
Shev charged, popping the thong from the hilt of her sword-eater as Bent Nose righted himself, whipping it from the sheath as his hard eyes focused on her, jerking it up just as he flailed his sword down. Steel squealed as blade slid into serrated jaws and she snarled, twisting her wrist. Bent Nose’s outraged bellow turned to a squawk of shock as his sword snapped just above the hilt and left him staggering forwards. He did not have to stagger far, however, before Shev’s fist thudded into his gut and doubled him up, wheezing. She clubbed him on the back of the head with the pommel of the sword-eater so hard it went flying out of her hand and skittered down the walkway.
She saw a heavy mace swinging at her, ducked it on an instinct, the wind of it tearing at her hair, spun away as it whipped past and crashed into the parapet, kept spinning, giving a scream, lifting her leg in a raking kick. Her heel could not have connected more sweetly with the fat man’s head if they’d rehearsed the whole thing. It snatched him off his feet, blood and teeth spraying spectacularly from his face, turned him over in the air and sent him tumbling from the walkway, a satisfying series of crashes below strongly suggesting that he had fallen onto, then through, the fragile roof of a lean-to in the yard.
A flash of metal and Shev jerked back. A skinny man with a birthmark around one eye stabbed at her and she dodged again. He was wearing a ridiculous swashbuckler’s three-cornered hat, no doubt reckoning himself quite the master swordsman now he’d slapped out the flames on his leg. Shev thought it always wise to play to the pretensions of an opponent, so as he brought his sword whistling over she shrank into a crouch, the helpless victim, thrusting her fist into a pouch at her belt, lifting her other arm despairingly as if to block the blow. She saw his rotten teeth as he smiled, sure the blade would strike her hand straight off. It was most satisfying to see him grimace as it clanged instead against the steel rods under her sleeve and scraped clear. She stepped past him as he lurched off balance, ripped her fist free, opened her palm and blew the dust in his face.
He squealed, reeling about, swatting blindly with sword and knife, trampling through the still-burning oil and setting his trousers on fire again. She ducked under his whistling blades, slipped silently behind him, grabbed the back of his coat as he spun around and gently but firmly assisted him over the parapet. A moment later, Shev heard the sweet sound of him hitting water.
Not much time to celebrate, though, as Shev was already wrestling with the last of the four. A little fellow, he was, but slippery as a fish and she was tired now, slow. An elbow in the gut brought vomit to the back of her throat, then a fist above the eye only half-blocked snapped her head back and made her ears ring. He forced her against the parapet. She fumbled for a gas bomb but her straining fingers couldn’t quite get there. Tried to reach her poisoned needle but he caught her wrist first. She growled through gritted teeth as he bent her back, crumbling stones grinding into her shoulders.
‘Quiet, now,’ he hissed, forcing her wrist around. His thumb must have caught the mechanism by accident. The spring twanged, the knife shot out of her sleeve and jabbed him in the throat. He retched, she butted him in the face, then as his head snapped back twisted her hips and kneed him full in the fruits.
He gave a breathy gasp, tried to clutch at her, but she slid around him, caught his hair and mashed his face into the battlements, loosing a shower of crumbled mortar and leaving him floppy as new washing. She jerked out the first thing her free hand closed around.
The garrotte.
God, but no one had ever been in a better position for a garrotting. Easiest thing in the world to jerk the wire across his throat, screw her knee into his back and garrotte the merry hell out of him. Probably he deserved it. Wasn’t as if he’d been taking much pity on her until the knife went off in his face.
But you do right for your own sake. Shev just wasn’t a garrotting sort of girl.
‘God damn it,’ she grunted, clubbing him across the back of the head with the handles and knocking him senseless, then tossing the garrotte over the wall into the sea.
‘What the-’
A great, slow, grinding voice, and Shev turned. A man had ducked out onto the walkway from a door at the other end. He had been obliged to duck because he stood considerably taller than the lintel. The Big Lom mentioned earlier, she guessed, and the name had evidently been bestowed without irony. They hadn’t struck her as a particularly ironic crowd, in truth. His head was immense, with a tiny prim little mouth, hard little eyes, a pimple of a nose all lost in the trackless, doughy expanse of his face. A shield the size of a tabletop was strapped to one trunk of an arm, and as his diminutive features crept together first in puzzlement, then anger, he jerked an enormous hammer from his belt as if it were a child’s toy.
‘Ha!’ Shev whipped her coat open, throwing knives jingling in a gleaming line. Fast as a woodpecker strikes she sent them spinning down the walkway, her hand a blur.
Her accuracy, it had to be admitted, was less impressive than her speed. Several missed entirely, clattering from the walls or twittering off into the night. Three others thudded into Big Lom’s shield and a fourth hit his shoulder handle-first and dropped off.
‘Huh,’ he grunted, peering over the rim with angry little eyes. ‘That your best?’
‘No,’ said Shev. ‘That is.’ And she pointed towards the one knife that had found its mark, lodged in his thigh just below the hem of his studded jacket.
He snorted as he plucked it out and tossed it away, a few specks of blood along with it. ‘If you think that’ll stop me you’re even sillier’n Horald said.’
‘The knife? No.’
Lom roared as he charged, shield up ahead of him like the end of a battering ram. Shev merely planted her hands on her hips and raised her brows. Halfway down the walkway, his great steps went a little unsteady. Above his shield, his hard eyes went a little crossed, then a little wide, and his furious roar turned to a hurt bellow and finally a brainless gurgle.
He was tottering towards her like a drunkard now, carried forward only by his considerable momentum, shield wobbling sideways, the great hammer dropping from his nerveless hand and bouncing into the yard below.
Shev nudged the door to the guardroom open and politely stood aside, pausing only to stick one delicately upturned foot into Lom’s path.
He blundered past, eyes already rolling back in his huge head. She hooked one of his great boots with hers and he tripped, slobbered, drool dangling from his clumsy lips. He bounced from the doorframe, spun wildly, knees drunkenly knocking, arms flung wide, then one foot caught the other and he crashed straight through the midst of a set of chairs and tables sending plates, pots and half-eaten dinner flying. He lay in the wreckage, face in a puddle of spilled stew, breath slurping, about as unconscious as it was possible to be.
‘But the poison’s another matter,’ said Shev, feeling intensely pleased with herself. Hannakar had told her that toxin could knock out an elephant, and for once he hadn’t exaggerated, apparently.
‘Ha!’ came a shout from behind and Shev spun about, rolled neatly, grabbing the sword-eater as she came up in a ready crouch.
It was Javre, dragging herself over the still-slumbering guard on the parapet, catching her foot on his head, tripping, stumbling up bleary-eyed and breathing hard, rag-wrapped sword clutched in one hand.
‘Huh.’ She stared at the crumpled bodies and slowly straightened. ‘What did you need me for?’
‘Someone had to row me out here.’ Shev slid her sword-eater back into the sheath, stepping over Big Lom’s slumbering form and towards the steps. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Here!’ hissed Shev, leaning close to the door and beckoning Javre up behind her.