“No!” And in one sharp motion Hennan tossed the key past me, into Tuttugu’s cell.
I found myself lunging at Edris, the point of my blade driving at the place his smile had fallen from. He proved quick-damn quick-managing to raise his sword and deflect my thrust. I may have nicked the lobe of his ear as the blow slipped past. Hennan spun away, leaving plenty of hair in Edris’s grip, but the boy slipped, struck his head against the wall and tumbled on to collapse boneless somewhere in the dark length of the corridor.
“Ah.” I backed off into the doorway. All around me the sounds of movement in the cells, the occupants roused by the clash of steel, a muffled bellowing close at hand. “Sorr-”
Edris made to cut off my apology with his sword so I saved my breath for defending. Swordplay on the training ground is one thing, but when an evil bastard is trying to cut bits off you most of that goes out the window. Your mind, at least my mind, remembers almost nothing when soaked in the raw terror of someone doing their level best to kill you. Any memory is done by your muscles which, if they’ve been trained year in year out, with or without much enthusiasm on your part, will make the best they can of what they learned in order to keep you alive.
The sound of sword hammering into sword in close confines is deafening, terrifying. I turned one thrust after the next, backing slowly, yelping when they came too close.
“Take the damn key.” I inserted the gasp into the melee.
Fifteen more years didn’t weigh heavy on Edris. He showed the same quickness and skill that had got the better of my mother’s guard, Robbin, back in the Star Room. It proved all I could do to fend him off. The reach of his long sword meant I’d no chance of getting to him even if I’d had a heartbeat to make any sort of attack.
“I don’t want the damn thing!” I backed through the cell’s doorway and Edris stepped up to it in pursuit, the lantern in the corridor silhouetting him. Mad thoughts yammered at me, rising amid the terror seething through my mind, an insane desire to throw myself on him and rip out his guts-the sorts of notions that get you killed.
There’s a problem with continually stamping down on the least sensible instincts that drive men to recklessly endanger themselves. Even the most reasonable and level-headed of us have only limited space to store such unwanted emotion. You keep putting the stuff away, shoving it to the back of your mind but like an over-full cupboard there comes a point where you try to cram one more thing into it and all of a sudden something snaps, the catch gives, the door bursts open and everything inside spills out on top of you.
“Just let me live!” But even as I said it the red veil I’d been trying to hold back descended. A liquid and fiery joy rose through me and while a tiny voice deep inside me wailed “no” I launched myself at the man who killed my mother.
With the entrance between us Edris’s long sword became a liability, confined between the door jambs. I swept his next thrust aside, pinning his blade to the side of the doorway with my own and smashing my forearm into his face. I felt his nose break. Spinning inside Edris’s reach, keeping his sword pinned until the last moment, I set my back to him and brought the elbow of my sword arm around into the side of his head with all the force I could muster. Without turning, I took my blade in both hands, reversed the point, and stabbed it under my armpit into his chest, grating between his ribs.
I pulled away at Edris’s roar of pain, stumbling into the cell, my sword caught on bone and torn from my grasp. His blade hit the flagstones behind me with a clatter. I stopped myself just short of sprawling over Tuttugu’s remains on the table and turned, hopping on my lead foot, on the edge of balance. Edris Dean stood in the doorway, leaning against one side for support, both hands on the short sword I’d driven into him, low on his chest. Blood ran scarlet over the steel.
“Die, you bastard.” It came out as a whisper. The battle madness had left me as quickly as it came. I coughed and found my voice, putting some royal authority into it. “You killed a princess of the March-you deserve worse than Tuttugu got.” It seemed too easy for him to just die there and slip away. “Be thankful I’m a civilized man. .” Unkind words might not amount to much after the driving in of a sword but they were all the salt I had to rub in his wound.
Edris watched his blood patter on the floor, in shock at his reversal of fortune. He raised his hands, dripping, and looked up at me, dark crimson welling from his mouth. The fact that he then smiled, showing bloody teeth, rather took the wind from my sails, but I carried on, trying not to let the uncertainty colour my voice. I knew enough about wounds to know the one I’d given him was fatal. “The necromancer who gives you your orders. . she won’t be pleased. I can’t see your corpse getting a decent burial.” I tried to smile back.
“That.” Edris drew a rattling breath, some of it sucked in around my steel, bubbling blackly. “Was a mistake.”
“Damned right! And the first mistake you made was going up against m-” A horrible thought interrupted me. I realized Edris had me trapped weaponless in the cell. . “You’re hoping when you die the necromancer is going to stand you up again to finish the job!”
“Are all royalty this stupid? Or did that bitch mother of yours breed with her brother to make you?” Edris straightened away from the door jamb, grinding his teeth against the pain, and took hold of the hilt of my sword where it jutted from his body. “There’s no necromancer watching from the hills, you moron.” He pulled the blade clear and the wound bled black. “I am the necromancer!” A laugh or a cough tore from him spattering blood between us. A few droplets hit my upraised hands and burned there like hot metal poured from the crucible.
My only chance lay in speed and agility. Edris might be gaining strength but he still moved with a certain stiffness, awkward around his injury. I backed a step, another, and prepared to spring when he cleared the doorway. Something caught in the back of my tunic. I tugged but found myself firmly snagged. Edris stepped into the cell, my short sword black and dripping in his fist.
“The closer to death we are the harder it is to kill us.” He smiled again, his face in shadow with just the glimmer of his eyes to hint at the murder there.
“Now-wait, just let’s stay-”
He didn’t wait but came on unhurried, sword held without a tremor, point level with my face. In desperation I risked a glance back to see what I’d caught myself on. Tuttugu glared at me from the table, the familiar hunger of the dead burning in his eyes. The hand secured closest to me at the corner of the table had twisted inside the metal band about its wrist and locked fingers in the loose material of my tunic.
I pulled harder but I’d paid handsomely for the garment and the linen wouldn’t rip. Looking back toward the door I found Edris directly in front of me now, sword arm drawn back ready to punch my own short sword through my head.
“No!” A hopeless wailing appeal for mercy as I fell to both knees, head bowed in supplication. Not perhaps the best way for a prince of Red March to die, but all my audience were dead or halfway there. “Please. .”
The only answer I got was the wet thunk of steel cutting flesh, and blood spilling about my shoulders. The pain came intense and searing, a burning that engulfed my neck and back, blood ran everywhere, and immediately a sense of faintness engulfed me, a deep weariness reaching up from somewhere to drag me down. I stayed where I’d fallen, waiting for the light to fade or beckon or whatever it’s supposed to do in your last moments.
“Bitch.” Edris, but in a choking voice.
I puzzled over “bitch” but realized I had to let go of questions and slip away. . The legs before me moved, perhaps to let me fall, but beyond them I saw another pair. . more shapely. . emerging beneath a dirty skirt. That made me look up. Edris had moved toward the doorway, his neck at an uncomfortable angle and spilling blood from a cut that looked to have made a decent attempt to reach his spine. Kara circled with him, sporting a magnificent black eye and holding her own stolen short sword, as black with gore as the necromancer’s.