But, even as I looked, the two surviving attackers lifted their weapons and moved to close in on him. I pointed at my clothes heaped up on the stone bench. ‘My sword’s over there,’ I shouted.
Priscus looked at the bench and smiled at the two killers. Before they could join each other at the end of the pool and turn on him, he’d already walked easily over and unsheathed my sword. He shook it and laughed again.
‘Well, come on, then, my lovelies,’ he called cheerfully. He walked round to the easiest point of escape from the courtyard and took up a fighting pose. I’d not have held out much chance for him. Without his clothes, he really was just a collection of bones, held in with wasted flesh and joined by a few sinews and scraps of muscle. His left arm hung useless. But he laughed again and stepped forward at the first of the killers to reach him.
I’ll admit that my own advantage in any fight — at least until I’d reached extreme old age — lay always in superior size and weight. I only made it to extreme old age because I never had to face anyone bigger or heavier who possessed an ounce of intelligence or luck. I can’t say that I recall any movement at all from Priscus. One moment, he was still testing the balance of my sword. The next, six inches of shining steel were projecting from the man’s back.
Without any change from his easy tone, Priscus laughed again and pulled my sword out of the dead body. He raised it again and stepped forward. Then he stopped and went rigid. He sat down in a coughing fit that didn’t look as if it would have an end.
But I’d now reached the side of the pool. Still holding the sword, I pulled myself out with my left arm and jumped to my feet. His own sword raised over his head, the one surviving killer was hurrying forward to go at Priscus. I swung with all my strength and got him just below the wrist. My own sword would have sliced the hand off as if it had been the end of a celery stick. This one might have been an iron bar for all its cutting force. Even so, you don’t hit out with my strength and not feel at least the smashing of bones. The man screamed and dropped his sword. Nursing his ruined hand under his left arm, he darted back from me. I bent and recovered my own sword and stood in his path. To get away, he’d have to get past me. Or he’d have to run all round the pool. If he tried that, however, it was a matter for me of stepping back four or five yards, and I’d still be blocking his escape.
When attacked on the Piraeus road, I’d barely had time to draw breath and put every effort into fighting for my life. Here, I’d had plenty of time to gather my wits, and was still pleased with a very easy kill. I grinned and stepped forward a few paces. I swung at the man with an easy motion and crippled his left arm at the elbow. There’d be no stabbing now, of himself or anyone else. I stepped back and kept my sword outstretched. ‘We’ll start with a few easy questions,’ I said lightly. ‘If I don’t like the answers, we’ll see what the Lord Priscus can do to loosen that tongue of yours.’
Still coughing, Priscus was back on his feet. Holding one of the other swords, he moved forward and stood beside me. ‘Get him on his back, dear boy,’ he wheezed in Latin. ‘I’ll show you what miracles of pain can be achieved with just one good hand.’
But the man jumped back from me. He raised his face to the sky and laughed. He paid no attention as I jabbed him in the side. Instead, he let out something too rapid for me to catch, but that might have been a prayer. He turned his back to me, and put his head down. Like an enraged bull, he charged at the wall that divided pool from main courtyard. I heard the bright smack of bone on marble plating as he threw himself forward. I saw the dark patch that he left in the fading light, and the faint smear that followed his descent to a still, black huddle at the foot of the wall.
I looked at Martin, who’d managed to heave himself out of the pool, and had now covered his face with horror. Feeling less jaunty than I had, I took a step forward.
Priscus got there first. ‘Not dead,’ he said as he kicked the body over again. ‘But he might as well be for all we’ll get out of him.’ He bent happily down and fiddled with the lower clothing. ‘We really aren’t having much luck in our interrogations are we?’ he asked. If he was about to add another gold ring to his collection, he didn’t get it. Instead, he gasped as another spasm of pain took hold, and he clutched at his side.
I just managed, before he pulled his sheet higher, to see the lump on his right hip. It had about the bigness of a bowl the doctors use for cupping blood. I saw it for barely an instant. But the tight and dappled skin told me all I needed.
Priscus laughed to draw off my attention. ‘But what have we here?’ he gloated with a finger pointed at the remains of my stiffy. ‘If I’d known your real feelings for our tub of Celtic lard, I’d not have gone to such extremes to trick you into Egypt to get him back.’ He laughed again and coughed. He did look set for another laugh, but had to stop and clutch at the right side of his chest.
I hadn’t seen him in pain there before, I noted as I went through the motions of glaring at him. And, if its purpose hadn’t been so clear, I’d have had excellent reason for sneering back at him. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between lust and the excitement of a good kill has no right to call himself a man.
But Priscus now got proper control of himself. ‘Get dressed,’ he said with quiet urgency. ‘If there’re three of them, there might be more.’
I shivered slightly in the decided cool of an autumn evening as I hurried over to where I’d left my clothes. Without bothering to dab off the water that hadn’t already dried, I pulled on my under tunic and my shoes.
‘Bring a sword with you,’ I said to Martin when I’d finished nagging him into his own clothes. ‘Be ready to expect the worst.’
He nodded and swallowed. Without any actual protest, he picked up one of the fallen swords.
I looked back at the black shape that lay in the deepest part of the pool. If a few drops of the blood shed by Priscus had found their way into the water, that was something I could overlook. The filthy body drifting gently across the bottom of the pool was a pollution that another day of cleaning and refilling might not efface.
Chapter 49
I can’t say often enough that the residency was a big place. Over by the pool, there had been a longish and thoroughly desperate struggle. I burst into the nursery, sword in hand, and nearly skewered Theodore as he wandered past me with a pan of milk. He only just avoided dropping it on the floor. I dodged the jug that Sveta threw at my head when I asked if all was well, and left Martin to deal with her screams of outrage and the wailing of two frightened children.
It was different where Euphemia had her rooms. For the first time since I’d met her, she was out in the light of a rapidly fading day. She sobbed and rocked back and forth as she held the dead Irene in her arms. One glance told me she’d been killed by a single stab to the throat. Two bodies dressed in black told me she’d only been got after a struggle that would have impressed even if she’d been a man. Throats cut, all three maidservants I’d given Euphemia lay in the dust.
‘Are you hurt?’ I asked Euphemia.
She looked up, blank misery on her face.
‘Are you hurt?’ I repeated.
She shook her head and went back to crying over the body of Irene.