A hoarse shout kicked him into wakefulness. He'd al ways been one of those who came alert easily; an inner clock told him it was the third hour past midnight, the hour when the Hunter came to lead away the old and sick, the time when sleep guttered closest to death. He swung his feet down and grabbed up sword and buck ler and opened the door in the same motion, and went down on one knee to peer out first. Nothing in this short length of corridor-he had good night vision, even in the velvet darkness. The rain was back, and the drum ming on the strakes of the roof made a white noise that drowned everything but the sharpest sound.
In the room across, a lantern flared as a door cracked open; that was Odard, always cautious. His head came out at the same level as Rudi's. The twins were on this side and down one; as he watched their door opened too, and Ritva-or Mary-rolled out, coming up in a crouch with longsword in one hand and dirk in the other.
No, it's Mary. She has that little scar over her hip bone. The twins tried to look as similar as they could, which was why he was careful about it.
Mathilda was the last door down, and a mirror showed there stuck in the wax on the end of a candle stub. She checked the ground before coming out in her knee-length nightshift, blades ready; the embroidered garment looked a little odd with a sword belt buckled around it.
A faint clash, the sound of metal on metal, and more voices. Their eyes met, and she nodded. The scream had come from around the corner to his left; how far down was hard to tell. The new noise came from the same direction. None of them had their body armor with them, or missile weapons, or any shields besides his buckler. They all had sword and fighting-knife be cause they'd been reared to put them on as automatically as shoes whenever they went outside their own home hearth doors.
Not worth taking time to get dressed, he decided. It would be if we had our war harness, but all clothes do in a fight is comfort you.
Ritva dashed down to the corner in four deer swift bounds, then dropped flat to peer around the edge, landing on her fisted hands with the blades still in them.
Rudi called up his knowledge of the Sheaf and Sickle's layout as the rest of them followed. It was chaotic-Brannigan's steading had grown over the years from the original core of the pre-Change tavern and microbrewery, knocking together half a dozen old buildings and modifying them as the business and the number of chil dren and grandchildren and employees and their fami lies grew. New doorways and corridors and staircases, and new chimneys for woodstoves and fireplaces…
The five of them gathered at the intersection, natu rally keeping back where they couldn't be seen from the next stretch of corridor. Odard had brought his bedside lantern, but with his shirt wrapped around it so the light it threw was muffled. The fruity smell of burning alcohol and hot wick melded with the acrid sweat of tension.
Eyes gleamed in the darkness, and teeth showed as bright as the steel; none of them was what you'd call timid, or complete virgins when it came to a fight, but sudden death in a friendly inn wasn't something that happened every day. And they were all of them children of field and farm, river and hill and forest; a town was an alien environment to them, much less fighting in a warren like this building. He could tell they all felt as cramped and out-of place as he did.
He had his buckler, a little foot wide roundel of steel shaped like a soup plate, with a hand grip in the hollow boss. As it happened, they also all favored double edged longswords with cross guarded hilts. The others were carrying their daggers as parrying weapons; Mathilda tossed strips of woolen blanket to each of the shield less ones, and they quickly wound them around their left forearms. That wasn't much protection, but it was a lot better than nothing.
Always thinking ahead, that girl, Rudi thought, with a taut grin. Let's see, half a minute since I heard that first scream…
"Follow me!"
Left down the corridor, bare feet nearly noiseless on the wooden floorboards. More light leaking out from under doors as people woke; one Corvallan merchant opened his, saw warriors naked as the swords in their hands padding by and prudently slammed the door shut again, with a thumping to show he was bracing a chair against it. The sound of fighting was louder now: an un earthly shriek of astonished agony, and a Mackenzie battle shout in a woman's voice:
"Scathach! Scathach!"
Someone calling on the Dark Goddess in Her most terrible form. Scathach: She Who Brings Fear. The red work of killing was being done within earshot. You didn't invoke the Devouring Shadow unless you really meant it.
The corridor ended at the door to the kitchens. To their left was a staircase that went through a ninety-degree turn as it rose to the second floor and a row of guest rooms. Mathilda slipped in front of him; she'd brought along her candlestick-and-mirror arrangement, and he nodded as she went up the stairs two at a time. The rest followed in a silent rush that froze for a moment as she reached the top and extended the mirror just up over the lip; they poised, ready to attack if someone peered over the edge. Light spilled from above; someone had lit a lantern, and their dark-adjusted eyes saw the dim flame as brightness.
Then she put down the mirror and spoke in Sign: Six with shetes and shields. Three facing this way, three the other. One door open between them; the fighting's coming from there.
Decision flashed through him, and his hands moved, quick and fluent: Matti, Ritva, Mary, you go back down, through the kitchen and up the other stairs-that's how they're planning on getting away.
They turned and raced down and around the stairs, leaping recklessly despite the razor-edged steel in both hands, as sure footed as wildcats. Rudi looked over and met Odard's slanted blue eyes. The other man smiled and shrugged ruefully. Rudi filled his lungs and called on the Crow Goddess in an enormous shout as he leapt:
"Morrigu! Morrigu!"
"Haro, Portland! Face Gervais, face death!" Odard yelled, the battle shouts of his nation and his House.
You screamed at a time like that to freeze your enemy for a moment. This time the freezing bit didn't work. The men facing him and Odard attacked immediately, the forward pair moving with smooth precision and the one behind alert on the balls of his feet, ready to step in if one of his comrades went down. They were wearing loose mottled gray-brown jackets with hoods and cloth masks that covered all but the eyes, trousers of the same material, and stout boots. It made him feel a little conspicuous in his underdrawers and bare feet, but not nearly so much as did the yard of sharp curved steel slamming towards his face.
Tunnggg!
His buckler shed it with an unmusical crash and a jar ring shock to his left hand and arm. His own cut-and thrust blade darted out, and was deflected in turn by the two-foot circular shield blazoned with a sun disk and three letters-C-U-T.
That was all too appropriate; he jumped as the shete hissed beneath his feet, aimed in a looping, hocking strike at the side of his leg. The man was as good a master of the slashing style as he had ever met, and his shete was a whirling blur like a power-driven saw, but the cramped quarters worked against him-once it nearly caught on the ceiling overhead.
Just then another man dressed like his opponent staggered back out of the door where the first shouts had come from; he had a tomahawk planted in his forehead, the blade sunk deep enough that the shaft was jammed against the bone. The outlander bounced off the oppo site wall and fell in a tangle of limbs that twitched like a pithed frog.
A naked man was in the doorway; Ingolf, the stranger from the sunrise lands. He clutched a knife in his left hand, but the limb hung limp and he had a nasty cut down the shoulder and upper arm on that side, with blood that looked black in the poor light glistening in a sheet down his side and dripping on the floor.