He flattened himself on the loose, crumbling bricks on top just long enough to listen for any signs of alarm and look down inside the wall. Vines, bushes, and weedy patches of grass crowded up against the wall. He swung himself down inside the wall, and flattened himself on the damp earth behind one of the bushes.
Still no signs that anyone in the villa was awake, alert, or even alive. If this was a trap, they were obviously waiting until he was well inside to spring it. There it might be hard to fight and impossible to run.
Once more Blade was doing something he had done a score of times before in as many different places. Not always for stakes as high as tonight, though. Tonight was not a matter of scoring points against the Russians or the Chinese or the Albanians. Tonight could make or break the future of two, brave peoples.
In the garden Blade did not need to look for pools of shadow. It was practically all shadow under the trees. He had to look instead for enough light to see where he was going, and also where he had been. He wanted to have an escape route firmly in mind, so that he could make a fast retreat if any of a dozen things went wrong.
Blade moved on. He would dart across thirty feet of open grass and go to earth under a bush. Then he would look in all directions and listen to all the sounds coming in from all sides. There were night-birds giving off gurgling coos, insects whining, and somewhere the sound of water running over stones. No human sounds-no footfalls, no clink of weapons, no voices. If he hadn't known this was a garden, Blade would have said he was alone in a forest miles outside the city.
Then he would creep forward on his hands and knees under the bushes. The slick, close-woven fabric of his clothes shrugged off thorns and branch stubs, but there were always stones and roots to leave bruises. Sweat ran down his face. It would not damage his dark camouflage grease, but it did attract swarms of insects. They whined and darted around his face and into his eyes.
Blade's caution paid off just when he had nearly decided that it wouldn't. As he flattened himself against a vast, gnarled tree nearly eight feet thick, he saw a high hedge about fifty feet ahead. Light shone through it, revealing a stone-flagged walk on the other side. The light also silhouetted a number of human heads on the nearer side of the hedge.
Blade practically stopped breathing while he counted the men lying in wait. There were at least ten. Two had crossbows; the others seemed to carry swords or battle axes. As one of them half rose, the light revealed his face more clearly. Blade sucked in his breath. It was Stipors' henchman, the officer who had helped conduct the interrogation of the prisoners returning from the Sea Masters.
So Tymgur's agent was laying a trap for him. That meant Tymgur's plots were proved beyond any further doubt. With Stipors' man involved, that also meant the Autocrat for War was deep in the plot with Tymgur.
Did he have notions of being Tymgur's Viceroy over Talgar when the Sea Cities were weakened enough to be easy prey for the Duke? Blade didn't know or care. Right now, the best thing for him to do was to glide quietly away into the darkness, his mission accomplished, and get himself and his men out of Mestron as fast as possible.
But he didn't want to leave yet. Even a few minutes' eavesdropping might add details that could help break up the plot faster. Blade had always been reluctant to drop an inquiry until he had found out everything possible. He crept forward another ten feet and flattened himself under a bush. Again he hardly breathed as he lay and listened.
The Talgaran renegade seemed to be in command. He also seemed to be in a vile temper, swatting noisily at the insects and muttering under his breath. Blade caught snatches of those mutterings.
«Why-we out here-eating us alive-Durkas staying inside with his pleasure girl-trouble for us if-«
Another voice floated out of the shadows. «Is the gate open?»
«Course 'tis, you fool,» said a third voice. «We want-«
«Shhhhhhhh!» came from the officer. Apparently he had suddenly realized that silence might be wise for a party lying in ambush. The silence descended.
It lasted for less than a minute. As that minute drew to a close, a raw, full-throated scream tore through the night air. It was a woman screaming in terrible agony and fear. In the few seconds after the scream, things happened very quickly.
The officer rose to his feet with a curse. «Damn Durkas! His games-«He turned toward the bush where Blade lay.
In the house voices shouted and feet pounded. Another scream came, then a window flew open with a crash.
Yellow lamplight flooded out into the garden through the open window.
By that light, the officer saw Blade crouching under the bush.
In the next few seconds, Blade made several more things happen.
In a single snap of trained muscles, he was on his feet. His arm jerked once, and a throwing knife slipped down into his right hand. His arm rose and jerked a second time. The knife flashed once in the air, then flashed a second time as it buried itself in the officer's chest. Blade beard a solid chunk as the hilt slammed hard up against the ribs and knew that it was in more than deep enough to kill. The ambush party had lost a leader and Stipors had lost a henchman.
But nine more men were too many to fight in the dark on unknown ground. Before the officer had hit the ground, Blade was sprinting along the hedge, away from the house. The hedge was just too high for Blade to leap with this much armor and weaponry on his body. Instead he covered fifty feet in a matter of seconds, ducked behind a tree, and hauled himself up into its branches. Pushing off with arms and legs together, he sailed down over the thick hedge. He landed lightly on his feet on the walk, facing the house. It was blazing with lights now, but there was no sign of anyone coming out the bronze-shod door. Blade didn't wait. He spun about and headed for the gate.
He went down the path like a lion running down a fat buck, and came pelting up to the gate.
It was unlocked but not unguarded. A man stood on either side of it, one armed with a bow, one with a sword. The archer backed away and the swordsman came forward, so that Blade had to defend himself against the second man first. He would rather have taken out the man with the long-range weapon, but there was no way to manage that.
His own sword flew clear of its scabbard and up under the thrust of the guard. It struck the other's sword up with a clang. Before the man could bring it down again to restore his guard, Blade thrust upward. His point went up into the man's chin and kept on going until it rammed into the brain. The man's mouth and eyes opened and gushed blood. Blade jerked his sword from the falling body and a smoke pot from his pouch.
He was a little too slow. As the green smoke rolled up around the gate and hid him from the archer, the crossbow went spung. Sharp steel tore through the flesh of Blade's thigh, clattering on the stones behind him. Blade winced but kept moving. His second wrist dagger dropped into his left hand as he closed with the dim shape of the archer. The other was still backing away, struggling to reload his bow, when Blade's dagger drove up into him below the ribs. Blade left the dagger in the body and bolted out of the gate.
He did not stop to examine his wound. There wasn't time to do anything but run as fast as he could for as long as he could. If he could lose himself in the darkness before Durkas's bravos started combing the streets-
But as he ran, he knew that he wasn't going to be able to keep going that fast for that long. It was only a flesh wound the bolt had given him, but it was a flesh wound deep enough to be costing him a lot of blood. He could not run on too long without stopping to bandage the wound. Even after that, it would give him a stiff leg before too long.