I took a chance and slipped my rapier point past the man in front to skewer his more cautious friend in the chest. It’s a risky move, for two reasons: first, because your blade is now out of line and the man in front of you has a chance to straighten his point before you can guard against it. I was willing to take that gamble because my opponent wasn’t especially fast and he was using a heavier – and thus slower – sword. The second risk is that you should never stab a man in the chest – the gut, the groin, the sides where the soft-tissue organs are, even the face, they’re all good targets. But the chest has ribs, and ribs are wonderful things for trapping swords, especially when a man starts to fall backwards, and that’s exactly what happened to me as I found myself holding my dying opponent’s weight on my rapier.
His friend in front saw my predicament and smiled the big, dumb smile of a bully boy who’s got you trapped. But the poor man had probably never heard of Falcio’s Flying Blades.
You probably haven’t either, so it’s best if I explain. Early on in my career as a Greatcoat, I had the genius idea of having my rapier blades made with a type of heavy coiled spring in the guard, with a small lever that, if pushed by the thumb, would release the catch and launch the blade into your opponent at a distance. Brilliant, right? Unfortunately, however, as Kest, Brasti, the King, and most especially the King’s Armourer, Heimrin, all pointed out, there was never going to be enough force in such a small spring to launch a two-pound rapier blade very far. The result was that when I pointed my very, very expensive rapiers at someone and pressed the lever, the blades just sort of flopped out a few inches and dropped to the ground. So, as it turns out, Falcio’s Flying Blades became known as Falcio’s Floppy Fumblers. The damned things cost me a fortune though, and they were still perfect weapons if you didn’t hit the lever, so I kept them.
Which is why my opponent, standing just a few inches from me and ready to bring his blade down on my head, was very surprised when I pushed the lever with my thumb, pulled my rapier guard back off the blade and hit him in the face with it. The small studs that adorn the guard make an especially memorable impression, and he fell back unconscious with an expression that indicated he felt the whole thing was really quite unfair.
I dropped the rapier guard and then threw my hand back, palm up, towards Aline. ‘Knife,’ I said again as I unsheathed my second rapier with my left hand.
The girl put a throwing blade in my hand more quickly this time, and I threw it hard at the crowd in front of me. There was a pleasant thunk as it hit a man in the chest. Throwing knives in the chest are perfectly acceptable, by the way, since you aren’t likely to need to pull them back out right away.
‘Knife!’ I said again, twice more in succession, to give my opponents something to think about. Each time Aline was quick and ready and, by the time I was hurling my sixth and final knife, I was marvelling at the fact that I’d never before had this much good luck with throwing knives. Every single one had made contact and taken an opponent out of the fight. Except, of course, for the sixth one.
The remaining two men came straight for me, but by this time I was used to fighting against the alley walls and they had spent too much time with their juices buzzing in their ears while they had to wait for their friends to either win the fight for them or get killed. They were both about the same height, so I used a tight slash across their eyes, missing the first but catching the second. The blinded one fell back and his partner raised his shield-arm to protect his face, giving me the perfect opening to stab him through the groin. It wasn’t the most elegant finish to the fight, but we were alive and they weren’t, so for a brief instant all was right with the world.
I suppose it’s worth mentioning that all throughout our fight, the bully boys kept up a steady stream of insults, inducements, threats and other invective, but none of it was very clever and I feel it would give them too much honour to bother repeating it. They had names, too, and I could describe their physical differences and fighting styles, but I’m not going to. It may be petty, but I don’t think these bastards deserve to be remembered.
As the rush of blood started to subside, I looked at the carnage in front of us.
‘Can I come closer now?’ Aline asked. As she came forward I expected her to be shocked by the sight of the bodies in front of her. Some were unconscious, but most were dead and lying in pools of blood. I was strangely reassured when she hunched over and vomited on the alley floor, but then she stood up, walked over to one of the bodies, pulled out my throwing knife and started cleaning it using cloth from the man’s shirt.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ I said as I put a hand on her shoulder.
She flinched, then pushed my hand away. ‘Someone has to do it. I can’t fight, so I may as well do this,’ she said.
I leaned back on the alley wall and slid down to the ground. I could have slept, right there, right in the middle of an alley strewn with corpses.
When she was done with cleaning the knives and replacing them in the bracer, the girl started to pick over the bodies.
‘Leave them be,’ I said, my voice thick with exhaustion. I forced my uncooperative legs to push me back up so that I could reassemble my rapiers.
‘I have no money, and they tried to kill me. The least they can do is pay for our supplies,’ she said. Brasti would’ve been proud.
But the men didn’t have much money to speak of. Aline showed me a handful of coins and a single silver bit. Their weapons were nothing special compared with what I already carried so I didn’t bother looking any further.
‘Can I take this?’ Aline asked. She held up one of the dead men’s hands to show me a small disc on the palm, a little larger than a caravaner’s silver mark. It was made of copper or bronze and attached by thin leather straps looped around his two middle fingers and thumb.
‘I don’t think it’s valuable,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said defensively, ‘but it’s interesting and I like how it almost glows a bit when you rub your thumb on it.’
I was about to give in, but something started to itch at the back of my neck. I knelt down next to her and examined it more carefully. The disc had very faint markings on it, parallel lines with offshoots and curves, and a bit near the centre was shinier than the rest.
‘Look,’ Aline said. She pressed her finger on it and it grew shinier, as if it had just been cleaned in that spot.
I looked at it for a moment and then took her hand and replaced her finger with my own. Nothing happened. The spot near the centre was still shinier, but not as much as when Aline touched it. I took my finger off and held her hand above it. The spot looked ever so slightly brighter, and became more so the closer her hand came to it.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Magic. I hate magic.’
‘That’s silly,’ she said. ‘Why bother making a disc that just gets a bright spot when you touch it? Even the magic symbols look odd – just a bunch of lines.’
‘It gets brighter when it gets closer to you – and those markings aren’t “magic symbols”, they’re streets. Look—’ I pulled the disc from the dead man’s hand and we walked down to the end of the alley. The markings on the disc, barely visible to the eye, changed slightly.
‘It’s like a map!’ Aline said, clearly missing the salient problem.
‘It’s more than that,’ I said. ‘It’s a map that leads them straight to you.’
Shiballe and the Duke had a mage at their disposaclass="underline" one powerful enough to create an amulet that could lead their men to us anywhere in the city. It was inscribed on cheap copper – you could make five for a penny. And people ask me why I hate magic.